


A girl, a boy and the stars

by swiftyfrisko



Category: Star Wars, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Dark Rey (Star Wars), F/M, Finn Needs A Hug (Star Wars), Force-Sensitive Finn (Star Wars), Implied Poe Dameron/Finn, Jedi Rey (Star Wars), Minor Poe Dameron/Finn, Post-Canon, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:48:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 37,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26385157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swiftyfrisko/pseuds/swiftyfrisko
Summary: Rey Skywalker is a living legend who single handedly saved the galaxy while everyone else was dicking around in spaceships. That’s how she tells it and if you’d don’t want a bolt of Force Lightning up your ass, you better agree.She’s also the most infuriating, arrogant, self-centered person Finn has ever met. The New Council asked him to keep an eye on her as she self-destructs, descending to the dark side, and that’s what he’s done.But he’s had it with her s**t now. He’s out. For good. Definitely.Definitely right after one last big night out on her big fat savior-of-the-galaxy expense account. What could go wrong?
Relationships: Finn/Rey (Star Wars), Finn/Rose Tico, Poe Dameron/Finn, Poe Dameron/Finn/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 58
Kudos: 23





	1. Chapter 1

The mood in the cantina was turning bad, fast. 

“You’re a cheat as well as a liar,” snarled the Killik, its clawed hand clasped onto Finn’s arm, preventing him from gathering up the pile of credits and hard currency that made up the pot he’d just won.

Finn looked around the Sabacc table at the rogues gallery of scowling faces; a collection of petty criminals, lowlifes and worse, sporting the most impressive collection of facial scars, bad haircuts and fearsome cosmetic enhancements (artificial tusks, always a bad sign) that he’d seen since the last time they ventured into the Outer Rim.

Threatening as they were, it wasn’t the patrons of The Greasy Gungan that worried him most. It was the prospect of explaining to the Princess of Pissed that he’d blown their cover. Again. The situation wasn’t lost though; it could still be turned around with a little finesse and charm.

“I didn’t cheat,” Finn corrected him calmly, removing the Killik’s claw and sweeping the pot towards him. “Lando Calrissian himself taught me that play.”

This produced another bout of incredulous groans, filthy looks and curses. 

“You’ve got a nerve, son.”  
“Who is this guy?”  
“Fuck disa bullshitter.” 

Ok, not quite the hoped-for reaction. Maybe he’d already overdone it on the name dropping, but a couple of drinks in him and damn, he loved to talk about the old days. He could tell those stories forever.

“So according to you,” growled A'Gron, the massive Whiphid whose faded-gold, humanoid bulk dominated the table, tusks twitching in irritation. “You learned Sabacc from Calrissian.”

“The master,” Finn confirmed.

“Dejarik from Chewbacca.”

“Master cheat.”

“Flying from Dameron.”

“Said I was a fast learner, though he might have been talking about something else.”

“Iced Phasma”

“Toasted actually,” he chuckled.

“Kicked Kylo Ren’s ass”

“More or less.”

“Blew up Starkiller with Solo...”

“All my idea. I take full responsibility.”

“...and were best buds with General Organa.” 

“She ran a few things by me, you know.”

A'Gron paused for a moment in confusion, his brow furrowing, reflecting the turmoil of the brain within as it struggled to process bullshit of such extravagance. “Next you’ll be telling us you fucked Rose Tico.”

“I was drunk!” Finn protested. “She took advantage of me.”

This blasphemy caused the simmering tension in the mob to boil over into violence. Finn was aware of being struck hard from behind, and thrown forwards onto the table, covering his head to guard against the blows raining down. A'Gron growled something and Finn was grabbed by the shoulders, thrown back into his chair where he sprawled, gasping.

“Take that back now,” rasped the furious Whiphid, “And don’t ever - ever - spread filthy lies about Saint Tico again.”

Finn fought to get his breath back. “I was kidding. Kidding.” Fuck his head hurt. He’d forgotten for a moment how a conflation of her legend with her sister’s had resulted in Rose being regarded as a holy entity by many in the Rim Worlds, a martyr resurrected from a fiery death in space to wreak vengeance on the First Order at the side of Leia Organa. A new cult worshipping her was spawned every few months. She lapped it up, even when she was sober. 

“I would never disrespect Saint Tico,” gasped Finn. “She’s the best. Did I tell you she saved my life?”

“That’s right, son. She saved all of us,” confirmed an older, human, player. 

Finn looked up at the grimy, blaster scarred ceiling and groaned. How the hell did he keep ending up in these situations? All he’d had to do was keep a low profile for an hour or two. But The Greasy Gungan was right next to their hotel - he could hear it from his room - and he could never resist a drink, or two, and a game. 

And she knew that. The sickening realization hit him; she’d chosen the hotel, she’d planned this temptation and he’d fallen into the trap yet again. She was a Jedi Grand Master at her crappy mind games, playing him even more thoroughly than he was cleaning out this bunch of no-hopers. 

“Kid, what’s your name? Your real name,” A'Gron regarded him with something more like pity than animosity. 

“Finn.”

“So, Finn, if you’re so tight with the biggest legends in the galaxy, why have we never heard of you?”

“I never got my personal marketing together,” Finn sighed, “I went cheap, paid a Kakoran 5 credits an hour, the content was weak, ripped off some celeb site, my logo was a template. My social media accounts got suspended for unapproved advertising.” He held his head in his hands. “I survived Starkiller, Crait and Exegol only for some hack to kill my brand dead.”

Nods and sympathetic comments around the table. No high fliers here, they knew all about the perils of cut price marketing and how it could dash the hopes of even the best planned criminal enterprise. Finn sensed he was winning them back to his side. Keep it going, kid.

“So you really were there, part of the Great Flight to Crait?” someone asked.

“Dude,” Finn sighed and shook his head. He gazed into the distance, the memories of loss, betrayal and Fathier riding etched on his face, there for all to see. “I really, really don’t want to talk about what happened between Starkiller and Crait.” 

“It must have been tough.”

“It fucking sucked ass, man.”

“You were at Exegol?”

“Sure, I was at Exegol. I took out the transmitter on the First Order flagship.” He’d not told them this one, and it was a killer story. “I saved the Rebellion.”

“You were flying with Dameron?”

“No, actually…”

“You were in the Falcon with Calrissian?”

“No, I was riding a... space horse. On top of the flagship. It wasn’t quite in space though, luckily.” 

Stony faces all around the table. 

“And I used the Force.”

He looked around the cantina, his gaze met by looks of disbelief and disgust.

“Boy, you are fucking hilarious.” A'Gron smiled.

“Thanks?”

“But you are also a sad, deluded, cheating bag of shit.” He rose to his full height and reached across the table to grab Finn’s jacket in one massive fist, dragging him effortlessly from his chair until they were face to tusks. 

“My money back, now, and maybe we don’t beat you too bad,” he spat.

“Chill. Take it easy,” Finn implored him. “I’m with Rey Skywalker. She’s going to be here any minute. Don’t do something you’ll regret.” The entire Sabacc table and mob of onlookers exploded in laughter.

A'Gron was unmoved. “You just don’t know when to quit, boy.” His mouth twisted into a snarl, tusks flat against his leathery yellow skin as he drew back a fist the size of Finn’s head, ready to deliver a skull pulverizing punch. 

The double doors of the cantina slammed open, and all eyes went to the scowling black clad figure that strode into the room, long dark hair flowing behind her, a half sneer on her lips, a lightsaber on her hip.

Finn swallowed hard, trying to gauge whether his Femme of Fury’s expression was the result of being actually pissed or just due to her case of almost terminally severe Resting Bitch Face. 

He never got tired of the effect she had on people. Jaws dropped. Conversation stopped. The barman dropped a glass, paralyzed, gawping. All activity in The Greasy Gungan had stopped, silent, suspended in awe and fear of the legend made real. The patrons shrank back as she scanned the room with a homicidally intense disdain.

Her eyes met Finn’s as he and A'Gron remained frozen in place, suspended over the table, the skull pulverizer poised and ready to be delivered by the now slack-jawed giant.

“Fucking knew it,” Rey muttered.

“Finn, darling, team-talk,” she called, waving him over. Finn peeled the Whiphid's fingers away from his jacket one-by-one, scooped up his winnings and walked over casually, straightening his jacket, dusting himself off.

She surveyed the scene again, and a realization hit her. “Were these scumbags fucking with you?”

“No, no problem. Just some banter,” Finn assured her. Please, gods, let them get through the day without any severed limbs or Force Lightning. He looked back to see A'Gron and the rest of them now intently studying The Planet’s Most Interesting Tabletop in silence.

“Good,” she said. “Thought you’d got caught cheating at that stupid game again.”

Finn heard the muffled curses behind him and kept on walking. Lando really had taught him that scam, so it was only half a lie. See ya suckers. Nothing short of a battalion of shock troops with air support was going to screw with him now.

“Let’s get a drink,” she said, moving to the bar.

“Sorry about not staying in the hotel,” Finn explained. “I had a headache, had to get something for it, and these guys dragged me into a game. You know, Outer Rim Worlds, what can I tell you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said dismissively, and pointed at the nervous looking barman. “Two of your best Regellian.”

He scuttled quickly across to some pumps and poured two tall glasses of golden, slightly fizzing liquid and presented them to her. “On the house,” he said with a timid smile.

“Fucking right it is,” Rey replied. 

Finn rolled his eyes and let out a breath of exasperation. 

“I did save the galaxy,” she sipped her brew. “That’s got to be worth a free drink.”

“You weren’t the only one involved.”

“Yeah, yeah, right.”

Finn bit back a reply. Why did everything have to be about her? He’d been at the heart of the action at Starkiller, Crait and Exegol and she barely even acknowledged it. To hear her tell it, the only battle of Exegol that counted was between her and Palpatine, and everyone else was just dicking around in spaceships. 

And Ben, of course. Bad boy Ben. Beautiful Ben. 

Fuck that guy. And his Force ghost. 

She was the most self-centered, arrogant, infuriating woman he’d ever met, and the Council owed him big time for this. He’d told them four missions only and he’d meant it. He was done with it after this one.

“Anyway, I found them, of course,” she began. “Ruins of an ancient Sith temple. Different continent, half the world away.”

“Ok, that’s good.” So she was in a good mood, which explained her casual dismissal of his screw up. It had been an RBF scowl after all. “But do you think they've got it?”

“Yes. I know it. We’re close, at last. The Council thinks this is a big one, a major piece. They hope it's going to complete their understanding of the Tantalus Unification. That would open up new waylines into The New Glory.”

What the hell was she talking about? “That’s great,” Finn replied. It really was. He was finished after this one. No more trailing her around the most burnt out, desolate systems in the galaxy, risking his life hunting down splinter groups of The Knights of Ren or Sith, retrieving antiques that they were assured were important in some mystical and entirely unexplained ‘New Glory’ grand plan. The past six months of alternating confusion, boredom and terror had pushed him to the limits. How could she have done this for 4 years and kept her sanity? 

“Sith temple,” she mused. “These guys are so predictable. Knights just can’t resist that ancient Sith crap. They get really spiritual about it. I almost feel sorry for them.” She took another sip of the bitter golden liquid and grimaced. “Almost. Anyway, they’re fucked now. Finish your drink and let’s get to the ship.”

“We’re going there now?” Finn asked, uneasily. Last time they charged in like this, it was very nearly the end of him. “We’re not waiting for backup?”

“Seriously?” she downed the rest of her drink and shot him a scornful look. “I have a reputation to maintain. Plus, if they find out I’m here, they’ll scatter and we could be weeks tracking them down.” 

“Ok,” Finn agreed. “We don’t want that.” Weeks more of this would kill him. 

“Finn, darling,” she looked into his eyes. “You are ready for this, aren’t you?”

“Sure,” he said, indignant. There she goes with the ‘Darling’ again. It wasn’t like he’d never told her how demeaning he found it. “You know me. When have I ever not been ready?”

“Ok,” she considered this for a moment, not taking her eyes from his. “It was a bit close on Gand and I’m not exactly sure what we’re up against here. I just don’t want to be watching you when I should be focused on them.”

Finn wasn't sure how to decipher the look she gave him. Why, after everything they had been through, did she still think he was some goof that needed looking after? She knew how to push his buttons.

“I’m ready,” he said firmly. “I’ve got your back. You don’t need to worry about me.”

“Sure,” she said, but he watched a broken half-smile betray her lack of confidence. “Let’s kick arse.”

  
  


\-----

  
  


Were there any more? If there were, he was a dead man. 

Finn put his back to a pillar, panting, and took his hand away from his side to take a look at the wound. How bad was it? Hard to say; it was dark and he couldn’t chance activating the saber to illuminate it, but it felt pretty bad. It was irrelevant anyway; he couldn’t get back to the ship now. If he ran into another one of them, they’d slice him down. Shit. He started to shiver, but wasn’t sure if it was shock or because he was soaked to the skin.

He needed to get back to Rey. It had all gone wrong when they were separated. Where was she? Somewhere in this vast grid of ancient crumbling pillars that reduced his sight lines to narrow passages that stretched off to infinity in four directions and hid everything else. But if he called out to her, that would give his location away. And she’d never let him forget how she’d saved his ass again. Best to lay low and hope. 

Lightsabers clashing off to his right and the fight cut short by a cry of pain that wasn’t her. He’d have to take the chance and get over there, fast. As he shuffled through the mud, the chilling rain started to fall again, the roar of the downpour hiding any more sounds that might guide him, the pillars obscuring his objective. This had turned into a nightmare, again. There could be more, and he could stumble into one of them at any moment, and that would be the end of him, after all he’d survived, ended here, dying alone in the rain and the mud in this shitworld at the ass end of the galaxy, chasing ghosts, and only Princess Patronizing here to see it. Keep going, Finn, keep going.

He rounded a pillar and there she was. 

Stood in a clearing created by a number of fallen pillars, a furious defiance in her eyes, lips caught somewhere between a smile and a sneer, a fierce, unconquerable beauty wielding a blazing yellow saber. Thank the Force. He slumped onto a section of broken stone, unseen, and watched her face a hulking cyborg, one of the members of the sect, as they circled each other. Rey stepped over a fallen Adept, not taking her eyes from the dark bulk of the Knight as it shifted the balance of its weapon in massive metal hands, a dual-ended combination of lightsaber and vibro-scythe that was taller than the Jedi and crackled in the rain. The thing moved with a smooth, intimidating grace - what species had it been originally? - but Finn saw no fear in her face, just a woman in her element. He suspected she lived for these moments of blood and clarity. 

“Betrayer,” snarled the cyborg in a voice like an earthquake. “Traitor to your bloodline.” 

“I was a big disappointment to Gramps,” she agreed.

“Look at you,” he roared. “Look at what you’ve done. You’re no Jedi. You’re one of us.”

Rey’s eyes flicked to the body at her feet, a man, younger than her, just a boy really. They’d blundered into each other, in the darkness, but she had been quicker and that had been the end of it. She was always quicker, always better and some poor bastard was always slower and dead. 

“Fuck you,” she shot back. “I’m going to skip over the part where I say I’ll let you live if you give me the artifact, and get right to slicing you into pieces, because I’ll get it anyway and I really don’t give a shit.”

Rey advanced across the clearing, and the Knight tensed, crouching slightly as she vaulted onto a chunk of fallen stone. As she dropped from the block, the cyborg took the initiative, springing at her to close the gap with cybernetically enhanced agility, feinting with the sabre to launch a sweeping, scything blow with the vibro-weapon that would cleave the Jedi in two, leave the pieces spinning in the air in a shower of blood. A fine attack and for an instant Finn forgot himself, the sudden speed and violence causing his heart to skip and stomach to tighten, but only for a moment; he knew how this ended. An arcing yellow blur, the head of the scythe detached from the weapon, flying into the night, the fatal blow never delivered, the creature unbalanced, overcommitted. Another flash of the sabre, and now its left arm was falling away from its body. An outstretched hand and the massive Knight was flung backwards against a pillar, the impact hard enough for Finn to feel it in his teeth, hard enough to topple the stone, leaving the cyborg lying propped up against it, struggling to take in rasping breaths. Rey watched the fallen colossus with a cool contempt that verged on disinterest. She had barely moved during the brief exchange.

The creature looked around for something, seemingly confused by the absence of its weapon and the arm still attached to it, as the woman in black walked casually towards it. 

“Tantalus is ours,” it rasped. “You have no right…”

Without breaking step or taking her gaze from the Knight, Rey flung the saber backhanded, for it to spin away in a long, looping arc, out between the pillars. Finn had seen this before; her signature coup-de-grace. The Knights eyes met hers in a final, fleeting act of resigned defiance before the yellow blade returned to sweep its head from its body, and continue on until she plucked the hilt from the air. She was smiling now. 

Rey reached the body and stood over it, making a motion with one hand that split the abdomen of the cyborg open, metal screeching and popping to unfurl like petals. From the ruined torso emerged a half-sphere, its polished surface etched with intricate patterns. The relic floated into her hand where she turned it around, a puzzled look on her face.

Finn breathed a sigh of relief. Please gods let that be the artifact they’d come here for. He was barely able to stand now. “Rey!” he called, but she didn’t respond; her attention was on the body of the young male Acolyte on the opposite side of the clearing. No, not the boy; there was someone crouching by his side now. A girl, dressed in the long dark layers favored by the followers of Ren, bowed and silent. She raised her head to glare at Rey, black eyes full of tears.

“Why?” the girl called, “Why couldn’t you just leave us alone?”

“There’s another half to this,” Rey advanced towards the Acolyte. “Where is it?”

“You don’t even know what it is,” the girl’s grief turned to anger. “You don’t know what we were doing here, Betrayer.”

The Jedi reached out, and the girl stiffened and twisted, gasping for breath, locked in place. 

“Where is it?” 

“I’m not giving you anything.”

“We’ll see” 

Rey broke her gaze from the girl’s eyes, the words taking her to another time, years ago, a naive girl and her tormentor, alone in the dark, a place of pain and violation. 

The girl’s eyes darted to the boy’s saber in the mud by her side and her escape. The hilt leapt up from where it had fallen and ignited, the red blade piercing her body. She gasped and shuddered. 

“Aran...” she whispered, her face slackening, body becoming limp. The saber deactivated and fell to the ground.

“No!” the word burst out of Rey unbidden, shock on her face for a pained second before it turned to anguish, to anger. The girl’s body lifted from the mud, hanging limp, suspended in the rain, her face white and small and peaceful above the billowing dirty black folds of her cloaks. The dark Jedi reached out at her, despair turning to anger, turning to a fury that came as easily as it ever had despite all her efforts to tame it. The body twisted, a cracking, popping sound coming from within as Rey cried a roar of rage and so many failures, so many disappointments. 

“Rey!” Finn called.

Streams of droplets of scarlet drifted upwards from the crushed body of the girl that hung in the night.

“Rey!” he screamed, though he barely had the strength to spare. “What the fuck are you doing?” his voice breaking. He was so, so fucking done with watching her do this. He couldn’t take it. He had to get away from this, away from her. It was unbearable. What had happened to the girl from Jakku that had flown to the stars with him?

Rey gasped, and the bundle of black rags, blood and bone that had been a girl dropped to the ground. She closed her eyes to leave the sight behind and lifted her face to the night sky and the rain, so it might wash away bitter tears, for them to join the rivers of raindrops in the mud to be taken far away, gone and forgotten, cleansed.

“Are there any more?” Finn called.

“Maybe. I don’t know if I care,” she replied, calm and quiet.

“Did you get it?”

“Yes. Kind of.”

“Then let’s get out of here, now.”

“But there’s always another one,” she’d not heard him. “Another piece of the puzzle. Twenty thousand years of lore and secrets and mysteries broken into a million relics and gods knows what. The light and the dark. It never ends. It never fucking ends.”

“Rey. I need to get back to the ship. Now.” 

Her gaze snapped to him, horror on her face. “You’re hurt.” She rushed over to where he was propped up against the broken pillar. “Shit. No, no...” she held her hand over the wound, eyes closed, focused, brow furrowed with effort, but the anguish still visible on her face. 

Finn lay there, powerless to do anything but watch her distress turn to anger. “I knew it,” she snapped. “When did this happen?”

“Right after we split. Ran into some guy with one of those vibro weapons. Got him though,” he could feel the wound closing, strength returning. 

“You were lucky, again,” she said, “Finn, you can’t do this anymore, I can’t take…” she faltered, breathing deeply as the effort of the healing started to drain her.

Finn knew what she was going to say anyway. She’d as much as said it before. Why should the legendary Rey Skywalker have to waste time and effort taking care of hangers-on. Mere mortals just held her back. 

She looked away, took back her hand and collected herself. “That should do it for now. Let’s get you back to the ship.”

Finn struggled to his feet as she put a helping arm around him. “Did I see an expensively stocked drinks cabinet on that thing?”

“You did,” she sighed. “Free drinks for saviors of the galaxy, remember.”

“In that case, mine’s a large one.” Finn stumbled slowly through the mud, as the rain fell on the dead and the living alike.

\-----

How far did her expense account go? 

Finn pondered the question as he took another sip of Merenzane Gold, wrapped himself tighter in the plush, golden bathrobe and relaxed into the curved, sumptuous bulk of one of the sofas clustered in the main cabin. He surveyed the interior of the shuttle. It was compact, even cozy, but the décor was pure high-end luxury in the currently fashionable style; flowing organic shapes inlaid with precious metals, polished wood or organic materials that Finn couldn’t identify, from worlds he’d never heard of and would never see. And it seemed to be brand new. 

The medbay had been similarly high-end and superbly equipped, and after twenty minutes there, followed by a glass of Merenzane, Finn could barely feel the injury, the stresses of the day slipping away. Floor to ceiling panels gave a simulated view of the passing of some of the more spectacular sights of the cosmos, and Finn stretched out, watching a supernova remnant slip by. He took another sip. So this was how she rolled now. Nice, but he couldn’t take what came with it. He had to have to leave this behind. He needed out.

His phone chirped. He’d only broken radio silence ten minutes ago, so that was fast. Finn glanced at the display - “Incoming: FLYBOY” - smiled and tossed the phone onto a low table, for it to throw up a holo of the caller.

“Yo!” he announced to the image of Poe Dameron, AKA The Best Pilot in the Galaxy. Damn, he wished he had half of Poe’s knack for self-promotion.

“Dude!” Poe replied, grinning.

“Bro!”

“Finnster!”

“The Dammerman!” 

“Mr. Eighty Seven!”

“SpiceBoy!” 

“Man, how’s it hanging?” Poe asked.

“To my knees, y’know.”

“Yeah, yeah. And… uh,” Poe raised an eyebrow and lowered his voice. “It's warming up the Ice Queen, huh?”

Finn looked nervously in the direction of the sleeping cabins and bathrooms, where Rey was taking a shower. “Keep it down, dude,” he hissed, “She’s in the other room. I’ll get Force Lightning up my ass if she thinks I’m telling everyone I’m poking the Great Skywalker.” 

“Yeah, yeah, chill,” Poe soothed. “So are you?”

“Man, are you kidding? I told you. She’s driving me nuts. Always putting me down, playing her mind games. I can’t take her any more. When we’re back on Dantooine, I’m out.”

“You said that before.”

“I mean it. This time I’m done. The Council asked me to do a job and I’ve done it. I’ve kept an eye on her, reported to them, that’s it. Somebody else can deal with this mess now. ”

“You can’t fix her, Finn.”

“I know it.” Finn looked down. “But somebody has to. They were right, she’s losing it.” He shook his head to banish an image of the fresh faced young scavenger in the Falcon, laughing. “She doesn’t want me here anyway.”

“Good, then it's settled by mutual agreement.”

“Yeah. It's agreed.” 

“Looking forward to having you back man. Back here.”

Uh, oh.

“I don’t have any plans yet.”

“Come on, get the old team together again. The deadly duo, Finn and Poe.”

“I don’t know. I’m going to take some time out, figure out my options. I’ve got a few things going on.” Not exactly true; he had no idea what he’d do or where he’d go after Dantooine. What kind of career opportunities were open to an ex-First Order Stormtrooper, ex-Rebel fighter? He’d probably end up working security again. Bodyguard if he was lucky and called in some favors. “Anyway, you’ve got the flying academy, you’re busy.”

“Not too busy for you, man.”

“Yeah, I don’t know…”

“I miss you, man.”

Shit, there it is.

“Poe, dude. I miss you too. But...,” go on Finn, say it, “Things aren’t going to be like they were.”

“They could be,” Poe insisted.

“Come on, bro. We’ve been over this,” Finn said gently, ”It was great, but that was then and now… I’m in a different place, now.” 

“Yeah, yeah, right. Ok...” Poe tailed off and looked away for a moment, before straightening up and collecting himself to continue with something resembling his usual confidence, “And so am I, in a different place. Life is good. I got them lining up for a piece of Poe. The students, they worship me. Babe from Togruta, had her in the X-wing this morning. Her idea.” 

“Ok... great,” Finn said. “I mean, highly unethical, but… great.”

“Yeah, well Poe Dameron never plays by the rules," Poe said with a sly smile. “So yeah, I’m good, I was just putting it out there, you know.”

“Yeah, I know,” Finn assured him, his eyes not straying from Poe's, “Man, we’ll always have Yavin.”

“Yeah. We’ll always have Yavin.” Poe nodded, gazing back. He paused for a moment before continuing. “And when you see Queen Cranky, tell her she’s a thief.” 

“Ok.”

“BB was mine. The shit she gets away with is unbelievable. Saving the galaxy should only get you so far, you know?”

“You’re preaching to the choir, man.”

“And I end up with 3PO? That was the worst trade deal in a history of weird, shitty trade deals in this galaxy.”

“So, umm, how’s he sounding now?” Finn asked.

“Kinda sexy,” Poe said brightly, and pondered the situation a moment. “I think 3PO is a she now. It’s confusing, I tell ya, but that female voice unit was the best thousand creds I ever spent.”

“You were going insane,” Finn sympathized. “That was another one of her mind games, bro, for sure.”

“Did I tell you the crew put me on their shoulders and we did a victory lap of the base after I installed it? It’s incredible. Everything that drove us nuts before suddenly became cute and endearing.” 

“It was genius, man. The original designers were just…” Finn struggled for the words, “Sadists.”

A noise from the sleeping quarters caught Finn’s attention.

“She’s coming, dude,” he said hastily. “Catch ya later.”

Poe’s holo pointed at Finn and scowled. “Tell her to stop taking what’s mine and get fu-”

Finn snatched the phone from the table, breaking the call as Rey entered the cabin, toweling her hair dry. She sprawled across the curves of the sofa opposite, wrapped in a huge gold bathrobe that matched his.

“Who was that?” she asked.

“Poe. Sends his love.”

“Yeah, right. He’s never got over the fact that I flew the Falcon better than him.”

“That’s debatable,” gods, she was insufferable.

“And that I never fucked him,” she continued drying her hair, “Seems everyone else has.”

How much did she know? Finn thought they’d kept that super discrete. A subject change was in order. “This thing is amazing,” he gestured around at the shuttle interior, “It’s a Beltane?”

“Yeah, new model.”

“Wow,” he whistled.

“I need it,” she said, “You’ve seen how it gets out there. I need somewhere to decompress after a mission. We should try the spa - supposed to be spectacular. Anyway, the Council should be kissing my feet, never mind giving me a shuttle.”

“They did kiss your feet!” Finn recalled, “You made them. You force choked the shit out of that guy.”

“Really? That actually happened?” 

Finn watched Rey as she laughed, trying to piece together the memories, “That must have been right after the fall of the First Order,” she reasoned, shaking her head. “Fuck, those were crazy times. I was so out of it. Like, permanently off my head.” 

Her expression darkened as more of those days came to mind. Bitter, confused days that were better forgotten. 

“Bad times,” she breathed.

“I know.” 

“Oh, really,” she replied coolly, then looked away, “You weren’t there. I’m not sure I ever told you what it was like. I was really lost.”

“Sorry,” he said, and regretted the apology immediately. Was she really opening up to him or was this just another one of her manipulations? Was she going to turn on the waterworks in a minute and look for more sympathy? Remember: you’re leaving this scene. It’s the best thing for you. 

“Those were difficult times for you,” Finn said, playing along.

“Yeah,” she said and forced a smile, “but you’re here now.” She hesitated before continuing. “That thing just now, with the girl, and the boy and all that. Sorry you had to see it. Fucking Knights and Sith look younger every year. It got to me.” 

This was the first time Finn could remember her displaying an awareness that her behavior was out of line or turning to the dark. “Do you ever think of taking a break from this?” he asked.

“All the time,” she said. “But they’re all depending on me. The Council, the High Guard, everyone. I’m the only one that can bring The New Glory. Who else is going to do it?”

“Nobody,” Finn conceded. Here she goes again.

“Right. Only me. The last Jedi. The last Skywalker. Or Palpatine.”

“Rey, the chosen one.” He could barely conceal his mocking tone. “It’s always about you, isn’t it.” 

“Yeah,” she mused, oblivious to his irritation, lost in thought. “Nobody else is up to the job. I have to save the galaxy again. It’s my destiny. They all say so. Everyone says it.” 

She was gone now, chewing her lip, playing with the cords of the robe, staring at the view. Was that a new tattoo on her wrist? It looked like the same design as the one on her left shoulder. Sometimes, in these moments of peace, Finn could see the girl from Jakku again. The scavenger, the survivor with the fire and the dark in her eyes. 

Stop, dude! You’re getting out, remember?

“You said you didn’t want me around on these missions,” he took another sip. “I was holding you back.” 

“Finn, I didn’t…” Rey trailed off into silence before collecting herself and continuing. “I think it’s better if you don’t get into combat situations. You could support me from here though.”

“Right.” No thanks.

“I don’t need any help kicking arse and you’re so much better at moral support than the light saber kind,” she smiled.

Incredible. He’d spent over a year training with the saber and other Force skills. It had been hard; the Academy was underfunded and understaffed, and had struggled to gather up a decent team of Force-sensitives. Everyone had seen potential in him and so he’d joined out of a sense of duty. For a while he’d even considered the Jedi path, but it wasn’t for everyone. Now she was dismissing all of that off-hand. So what had been the point? He’d done as well as anyone could, but they kept finding themselves up against real heavy hitters. She’d lost three partners in the year before the Council had him join her. 

“You can be the geeky assistant that stares at the screens and figures out how to access the security systems, turn off cameras, that kind of thing. And I’ll get on with, you know, doing the nasty, dangerous stuff.” She was warming to the task now, really trying to sell it. “And the cook-unit here needs managing. It does a great roast Porg, you should try it, just like the real thing.”

Gods she knew how to rub it in. The fact that he’d wanted this hardly softened the sting of knowing that she had so little respect in his abilities. He couldn’t look her in the eye. “Yeah, sure.”

“Great. Thanks for being so understanding,” she exhaled and laid back, staring at the ceiling. “I can’t tell you what a weight off my mind this is. I’ve been so worried about my FN.” 

“Right, ok.” She never sounded happier than when she was putting him down. 

The phone chirped again, and Finn fished in the pocket of the robe. Please don’t be Rose. Please don’t be Rose.

Incoming: BOOTICOLL. 

Shit.

Not in the mood. Decline, decline. He could handle her later.

Rey was diverted now by something on her tab, thank the Force. Finn laid back - damn this thing was comfortable - took another sip of Merenzane and watched scenes of Golden Age Coruscant drift by. Wonder how that roast Porg tastes. Whenever the Council guys, or the Guard started banging on about The New Glory or Unifications or whatever, they made them sound really important. Vital to the struggle against the dark side. Essential in ensuring that the galaxy existed in peace and ushered in a new age of harmony. So Rey’s mission was really, incredibly important and by extension making sure the meals were tip-top, the drinks cabinet well-stocked, the spa always supplied with freshly folded towels, that was also super-important. It couldn’t be left to just anyone. It needed-

Stop! Don’t get sucked into her shit. You’re out, dude. The galaxy awaits.

  
  


\-----

  
  


The roast Porg was amazing.

“Mmm!” Finn enthused. “Now this. This is the shit.”

They both picked hungrily from the plate of assorted meats and snacks sat on the low table between their sofas. 

“Yeah, right.” Rey confirmed, mumbling through a mouthful. “I’ve missed these little guys. They were the best thing about Ahch-To, hands down. What a shit hole. You were so lucky you missed that.”

Finn rolled his eyes. She never stopped moaning about the coldest, wettest most miserable island in the known or Unknown Regions. 

“Try the Gungan eggs,” Rey suggested, pointing at a bowl of translucent orange spheres, each the size of a marble.

“Seriously? Are they real or synthetic?”

“Dunno. Whatever. They’re tasty.”

“If they’re real, that’s very illegal.”

“Yeah, I guess. But, you know…” Rey shrugged. “Gungans.”

“Say no more.” Finn chuckled and took a spoonful. “Messa no wanno be eeeato,” he mimicked before swallowing the mouthful, causing Rey to spit her synthetic (maybe) Ewok cutlet onto the floor. 

Nothing like crapping on Gungans to put everyone in a good mood. Finn recognized this as a good time to ask about a reference. Finding a decent job wasn’t going to be easy, and a word from Rey Skywalker could open all kinds of doors.

He put down his plate and cleared his throat. “Rey. I’ve got a favor to ask you.”

“Oh. Hey,” she looked into his eyes.

“I was thinking. I might strike out on my own. Go my own way.”

“You and your ideas,” she said softly, a smile on her lips.

“Yeah, big ideas. And if I do, a good word from you would be very helpful, you being a legend and all that.” A bit of flattery couldn't hurt.

“I’m always here for you,” she breathed.

“Great. Thanks for understanding.” Well that had been easier than expected.

She giggled and it felt like being warmed by the sun as it peeked out from behind dark clouds on a stormy day.

Finn studied her face as she rested her chin in her hand and looked away, returning to his eyes with a quick, shy glance. There were times when he couldn’t help but be taken back to the Falcon, all those years ago, when they’d sat alone and talked and laughed for hours as the ship hummed around them, heading to the stars. He remembered them buzzing from the excitement of taking huge, daring steps into a world that seemed terrifying and thrilling and how comforting it was to have someone to share the experience with. They’d drawn strength from that bond as they embarked on an adventure without limits, reborn, breaking the ties that had confined them in the sadness and isolation of their old lives. Sometimes he dreamed of going back, to choose different words, to set things on a different course, with her, with everything. He wished they could be that free again, just the two of them and the stars. 

He needed to warn her about the path she was on while he had the chance. Put all his cards on the table, no cheats, no scams, and let them fall where they may. 

“Rey,” Finn took a breath and held her gaze. “You’ve got to leave this. It’s killing you.”

“You’re so right,” she sighed.

“And it's killing me watching you do this. Watching you slip away into the dark. I can’t do it anymore,” he held his head in his hands. 

“It’s ok.”

“It’s not. You’re losing yourself,” he insisted, “I know you feel as if you don’t have a choice, as if the entire galaxy depends on you, but you can leave it all. Come with me.” 

“Yeah, yeah. I know,” she laughed. 

“What? No. Rey, listen to me.” He was pleading with her now. She had to see. It was now or never. “You know the dark has always been in you. All this shit, the killing, the fighting, it just makes it worse. Stop. Please.”

“You bad boy,” she smiled.

“Rey?”

Like a punch to the gut, the realization drove the breath from him. She wasn’t talking to him. She wasn’t looking at him. She’d heard nothing that he’d said. She was talking to someone else. 

Ben. Of course. Fucking Ben and his fucking Force ghost. 

Keep it together, boy. Finn studied the ceiling of the Beltane taking deep, even breaths as she continued to sigh and giggle and talk in gentle murmurs. He’d let himself get drawn into her for a moment, let his guard down and received a kick in the balls as usual. He was an idiot, a fool that needed reminding of a few basic facts. She is who she is. She’ll never change and it's not his job to fix her. She’ll never shake off Ben. Solo was an evil, manipulative bastard when he was alive and death hasn’t improved him. Finn knew he needed to do what was right for himself and that was getting out of this situation. He focused on calming himself and let his eyes drift along the swirling lines of hand-painted text that decorated the ceiling. They were probably inspirational if you knew the language. 

“Sorry, were you talking to me?” Rey asked.

“No. Yeah, but it doesn’t matter.”

“Ok. I was talking to Ben. Couldn’t really see you through his ghost. You looked a bit serious.”

“It was nothing,” Finn shook his head.

Rey threw herself onto the sofa beside him and fixed him with a look.

“FN. Darling FN. My rock,” she grinned, and Finn had the impression of being sized up by a hungry, toothy predator. 

“Let’s get away somewhere,” she said. “Get away from the Council and all that crap. A weekend away. We’ve earned it; you almost died just now.”

The hell? She never did this. She was always about the mission.

“Uhh, well,” don’t fall into the trap, dude. Refuse. Make an excuse. 

“Ok. How about Kashyyk?” Finn, you are pathetic.

She wrinkled her nose. “Ugh.”

“Ok. Bespin?”

“I was thinking Canto Bight. It’s lovely right now.”

Finn grimaced. Seriously? She knew he had no good memories of that place.

“Oh come on. I bet you’ll hardly recognise it. I fancy somewhere classy and relaxing. I go to cantinas and it’s all taking selfies with fans or hacking off limbs, nothing in between.”

“I don’t have anything to wear,” he protested. “I’m not going casual again. I stood out like a sore thumb last time.”

“No problem,” she said confidently. ”You’re not with that Tico tramp now. I’ve picked something out for you already. It’ll be waiting in your suite. I booked that too.”

“Wait, what?”

“You’ll look fabulous,” she assured him. “You fucking better if you’re going to be standing next to me.” She laughed, then added, “Or somewhere behind me. You know.”

Yes, he did. Another weekend of trailing behind her, trying to minimize the wreckage.

“You know my opinion of mixing you with casinos.” 

“It’ll be fine. I just fancy letting my hair down.”

‘Letting off steam’ and ‘letting my hair down’ had encompassed a variety of carnage over the past few months. Finn liked the sound of this less and less.

“Pleeeease, FN,” she leaned in and fluttered her eyelashes at him. 

“Ok,” he sighed. What was the point in fighting it? It didn’t change anything; he was still getting out, and there were worse ways to spend his last few days than an all expenses paid trip to Canto Bight, in style. It might even be enjoyable if he could shake her off and explore by himself. There was the possibility of banishing a few old ghosts, dispelling some bad memories. “If you go low profile and take it easy on the slots.”

“Oh, definitely low profile. I don’t want to be bothered. And don’t worry about the slots,” she said dismissively, “I’m never touching one of those fucking machines again.”

Finn shot her a dubious side-eye. 

“Don’t worry,” she insisted, “I’ve got you to look after me, keep me on the Light side. Good old FN, keeping me grounded,” she grabbed his arm and snuggled up. “Even though I’m a living legend.”

Gods, if they could just get through the weekend without any Force Lightning and extensive property damage, it would be a miracle. 

Finn grabbed his glass and threw back the last of the Merenzane. 

“I have a bad feeling about this,” he whispered to the swirls of letters of inspiration on the ceiling of the ship as it sped through the stars. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You made it to the end! (of this chapter) Woo! You rock! 
> 
> You've made my day. I think I'll reward myself with a cookie, a coffee and catch up on some reading this evening. 
> 
> Wasn't sure anybody would read it all, because it's not Reylo, but I really fancied getting into what could happen to Rey & Finn after RoS. Everything is so full of possibilities for them, but what's an ex-scavenger and aspiring Jedi, and an ex-stormtrooper to do? Could it all go wrong? It did for Luke. And for Han as well, I guess?
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoyed it. Take care!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finn has a nice chat with Rose while Rey keeps a low profile.  
> Finn and Rey won't miss each other at all and are not at all jealous, no way.  
> Rey makes Finn an offer he cannot refuse. Ewoks taste great.

Canto Bight hadn’t changed at all.

He’d walked the casino floor in a daze, drowning in deja vu, surrounded by sounds and sights and people that merged with his memories until he wasn’t sure where the past stopped and the present began.

He’d not sought it out, so Finn was sure it must have been his unconscious that had led him here, the same balcony he and Rose had stood on years before, where they had shared a moment of peace in the midst of an adventure. He wandered to the guardrail to look out at the racetrack and the town beyond, pools of light dotted among the villas, boutiques and restaurants, as the last embers of sunset faded behind the surrounding hills. What would she make of it now? Still beautiful, still lousy.

Whether there was peace or war, someone was making money and they wanted to show it off in Canto Bight. Even the fashions hadn’t changed, the huge variety of species homogenized by elegant black and white formal-wear. If you had the money, you were welcome, wherever you were from. He pulled at the collar of his tuxedo which projected up stiffly behind his head; was it centered correctly? And and was this really the fashion? He’d not seen anyone else wearing the same style. He had to smile as he remembered his previous visit, he and Rose invading the place in combat fatigues and jumpsuit, and wondered how they’d managed to even get in the door. 

Finn turned to look at the casino floor. The ridiculous shows of affluence certainly hadn’t changed. Something large and insect-like looked around slowly, the drool from its mouth caught by two nervous boys with golden cups. A woman, eyes hidden by a veil and dressed in an elaborate black gown, moved at a funeral pace, preceded by two delicate looking creatures that scattered white petals in her path, followed by two girls that raised the long black train of her dress above the polished stone floor. Absurd.

Canto Bight hadn’t changed and nor had he. Both stuck in time. 

Poe had the academy and his adoring/horny students. Rose was building a religion. And Rey had just been voted “Most Awesome Being in the Galaxy” again; he’d seen the news reports before he’d left the suite. She could thank the Council's media and marketing team for that.

Why hadn’t things worked out for him? For a while, he’d felt his life was being directed by the Force, giving it purpose. It had taken him to Rey and the Rebellion, and put him at the heart of historic, pivotal events, but now he was increasingly unsure. Maybe it had all been blind chance, and he had just wanted to believe in destiny. Their shared destiny. Whatever, it was time to take back control.

His phone rang. Incoming: BOOTICOLL

What better place to talk to Rose? Being here at the scene of their shared experience gave him a feeling it would go well, so he approved the call, privacy options on - she didn’t need to know he was on Cantonica, the place being full of negative memories for her.

“Hi Finn!” Rose’s holo burst into life. She looked good - a new haircut and wearing something expensive looking. No more jumpsuits for her.

“Hey Rose.” Perhaps he’d been worrying unnecessarily about this call. He just had to catch her at the right time. “Sorry I’ve not called for a while. How’s it going?”

“Ehh. Busy, you know. Work, work, work. So many personal appearances. All of these cults and churches want me to come and give my blessing. What can I do?”

“Charge them through the nose?”

“Oh Finn,“ she laughed. “Exactly. You know me so well.”

“Girl’s got to make a living. It’s a whole new galaxy,” Finn smiled. The trick to having a reasonable conversation with Rose was all in picking the right time and place. 

“You’ve been away for too long,” she sighed. “Where are you? When are you getting back? I miss you.”

“Yeah, sorry. I’m still on that mission for the Council.”

“Still?”

“Rose, I’ll be back sometime soon. You know I will.”

“You know, Finn, honey, you really should come back soon. I don’t want to have to make a decree to my followers to bring you to me dead or alive.” She threw her head back and laughed, and Finn chuckled along nervously.

Her laugh died. “But I would if I had to.”

He broke out in a prickly, cold sweat. “This mission. It’s really dangerous. It’s so dangerous I may not make it back.”

“Oh no. I’m sorry,” she really did seem upset, “I was just joking about the decree. Please be careful.”

“I am. I’m being very careful, but I could buy it at any moment. I wanted to talk to you now, because I may not get another chance,” he leaned closer to the holo and lowered his voice to a husky whisper. “I’m living day to day, babe.”

“No. Don’t say that. I’m going to worry myself sick,” she ran her fingers through her hair, a desperate look on her face. ”Oh Finn, you’re so brave. Why do they send you on these terrible missions? I need to see you.” Her holo leaned in and pressed something on her phone. 

“Wait,” she squinted at something off-holo, confused. “You’re in Canto Bight? And you’re wearing a tux.”

“What? How did you do that?!” Shit! He’d seen a software update come in last night, change to privacy & sharing policy, blah, blah, blah, agree, agree, agree. Think fast. “We’re tracking down some Knights of Ren. Real bad dudes. And they like to gamble.”

“And she’s in Canto Bight,” realization dawned on Rose. “Fucking Queen Bitch. I just saw her getting some stupid award.”

“Rose…”

“You’re with her in Canto Bight! Fuck!” 

“I don’t want to be here, I really don’t, but the Council ordered me to keep an eye on her. They say it's super important.”

“You fucking liar,” she spat, pointing at him accusingly, a bottle in her hand now. “You can’t stay away from her. Oh Rey, Rey, you’re so cool,” she mocked, “Oh I love you Rey. Sucker!”

“Rose…”

“So when we were there,” she was on a roll now. “We got knocked out and put in a stinking cell and barely escaped with our lives and now you’re there all dressed up, fucking her in some fancy suite. Agggh!” 

“I’m not! Rose, calm down.”

“It’s not fair. She gets it all; looks, superpowers, you.”

“Ok, I see those Knights now. I have to go. Wish me luck.”

“One word from me. One. Fucking. Word. And you’re dead meat, buddy. They’ll hunt you down-”

He broke the call, let out a long breath and leant back against the railing. He could feel a stress headache coming on. That actually hadn’t gone too badly. 

Where the hell was Rey? Surely she wasn’t going to stand him up. He looked back to the casino but found no sign of her. The gross insect-alien swatted away the drool-collector boys. The veiled woman in the imposing black dress was still making her way across the casino floor. Looked like slow going when you couldn’t see much and had to walk on petals. 

What happened to that guy? He’d been in the path of the woman, but had fallen, sprawled to the side and now serving droids were fussing over him and his spilt drink. It happened again; a woman shoved into a gaming table by some unseen force. The woman in black continued a slow motion sashay across the casino floor.

Towards the balcony. Towards him. 

She paused and though the veil made it impossible to tell, it appeared that she was looking directly at him, and a slight smile appeared on her lips. After a few seconds she continued. 

Finn experienced a familiar sinking feeling.

The petal girls continued to create their mottled white path and the parade advanced towards him, step by step, as he watched, frozen in place. At last they reached him, one white petal settling onto the toe of his shoe, and the girls withdrew to either side. The woman in black stepped up to him, the dense black veil hiding her eyes even at this close range.

“What do you think?” asked Rey. 

Keep it together, Finn. “Nice. Very nice.” 

“Nice?” her glare sliced through the veil. “It’s fucking spectacular.”

“You said you wanted to keep a low profile,” Finn whispered, loudly.

“Yeah,” she pointed at the veil. “Low profile. But with style.”

Finn squinted involuntarily and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to relieve the pressure. That headache was coming on nicely. “Are these girls going to be around all night?”

“No. They’re almost out of petals,” she sighed. “Unscheduled visit to the ladies room. Wow, that was a real team effort, I can tell you.” She looked down at the petals at her feet and back at the dotted white trail that wandered across the polished stone of the casino floor. “You think the petals are a bit much?”

“Yeah, a bit.”

“My darling FN,” she said. “You keep this Skywalker grounded. What will I do without you? Ok, no refill on the petals. Keeping the girls at the back though,” she added. “You wouldn’t believe how much this thing costs. Don’t want it snagging on something or some dirty droid rolling over it.”

She moved closer and fussed with his lapel. “You look fabulous, by the way. Stood on the balcony, the lights of Canto Bight behind you, I was quite overcome for a moment there…” she paused and pouted. 

“I’d been there for a while. Wondered if you’d stood me up.”

“No!” she protested. “I had a few Interviews, you know.”

“Ah yes.” There she goes. Took her all of one minute to get to it. “Most awesome person in the galaxy.”

“No,” she corrected him. “Not the most awesome person. Most awesome thing. Period.”

Finn chewed this over for a moment. “So you’re more awesome than that artifact they found near Rakata Prime? Billion years old, reads your mind and creates inter-dimensional gateways to your true heart’s desire. Powers itself by harvesting gravity waves from binary black holes?” 

“Yup,” she declared confidently. 

“Ok. You do have your moments,” Finn conceded. 

Chimes announced an incoming call and one of the flower girls presented a phone to Rey with a curtsey. “Oh. The Council. I have to take this.” She walked to a corner of the balcony that was hidden from the casino floor and set the phone on the surrounding balustrade to read the message projected above it.

“Congrats on finding a part of Tantalus, they say. They never told me there was more than one part,” she tutted. “Excellent work _both_ of us. Blah, blah, I’m so great, etc. Ah - they have a location for the other half. Let’s see where we - sorry - I am off next...” she directed a gesture at the phone, requesting it to display the attached schematics. 

“That was fast. How did they find- “ Finn began, but stopped, dumbstruck by the projection of the world that hung in the air before them. “Whoa. What the fuck?” he breathed.

Rey lifted her veil to get an uninterrupted view, eyes wide in disbelief. Surely it had obscured her vision, or there had been a glitch in the imaging of some kind. But the image persisted. There was no mistake in what it was showing. 

“Finn,” a tension in Rey’s voice as she struggled to understand what she was seeing. “What is this?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense,” he replied, brow furrowed in confusion. 

“Here,” he pointed to the rust brown half of the planet, “is a desert world. But here,” he pointed to the other half of the planet which was a verdant green, “its a forest or jungle world, but...” he stopped, unable to go further.

“But they’re both on the same planet.” Rey completed the paradox for him. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“It's a kind of…” Finn groped for words. “Multi-Terrain world.”

“How is that possible?” Rey said, unable to look away from the multi-hued sphere before them. “How can you have desert and forest on one planet? It's against all natural laws.”

“It's breaking my brain just looking at it.” said Finn, turning away from the image, but it could not be unseen. 

Rey reached out to the casino floor, using the Force to whip a drinks tray out of the grasp of a serving droid and into her hand. She positioned the tray to block out the green part of the planet’s image.

Finn exhaled in relief. “Desert planet. It’s a desert planet. Ok.”

“That’s better.” Rey composed herself. “The objective is on the desert part, so I only have to worry about that. I can ignore the forests. Just pretend they don’t exist.”

“I’m not sure I can,” he was overcome by a feeling of disquiet, something tugging at his soul and senses, protesting at the wrongness of the situation. “Rey, this isn’t right. Don’t go.” 

“I don’t like it either,” she deactivated the phone’s display and looked away, folding her arms around herself as if chilled, though the evening air was warm. Her voice was quiet and burdened by doubts that she’d never shared with anyone, though she’d come close recently, so very close. “But I have to. They depend on me. Everyone’s depending on me. What can I do?” 

“You could do what’s right for you, for once. Go somewhere else. Anywhere.” 

Her dark eyes met his, and the words they whispered in silence formed a plea that filled the world between them, surrounding and connecting them, twisting Finn’s heart in a way he struggled to identify, emotions as unexpected as they were painful.

And for a moment, they were alone, the glamour and buzz of Canto Bight a few steps and a thousand light years away, just the two of them, a boy and a girl together in the night beneath a billion stars. He found himself beside her, his hand on her arm, with no memory of how and when he’d moved to her, just a need to banish her fears and feel her smile again. 

“It doesn’t matter where I go, Finn. I can’t run from the Dark,” her voice subdued, resigned, “It’s always with me. You’ve seen it.”

“It’s the part of me that wants to go there and find them waiting so I can kill them all, every single one. It whispers to me at night about how good that would feel.”

Finn searched for words that would carry her away from here. Words that would make her see that she could break free and rise above all of this instead of falling deeper. But they faltered and died on his lips; how could he defeat the truth that this struggle was something he could never fully understand. It was hers alone. 

She held his gaze. “You can’t help me. Nobody can. And anyway, you’re gone, remember? It's not your business anymore.”

Finn sighed and looked away. She was right, he was getting out because it was the right thing to do. He had to look after himself, and she would be fine. She was a survivor, more than capable of handling whatever the universe threw at her. 

“Come on,” he snapped out of the moment, “I booked the table. The restaurant’s through there.”

She lowered the veil and lifted her chin to resume the regal demeanor demanded by her outfit. “Excellent. You go ahead and I’ll follow,” she waved him on. “Don’t want you messing up my petals.”

Finn led, slowing his pace to adjust to her stately procession of petal scatterers and train bearers. Yet again he was reduced to being part of her parade. He heard her muttering in a tense, low voice and glanced back. She was alone, so he guessed it was Solo again. She didn’t seem to be enjoying the conversation. Lovers quarrel? How do you break up with a Force Ghost that can drop in any time, any place, whether you like it or not? 

As their path wound through the main casino floor, Finn realized that it would take them dangerously near a bank of slot machines. He looked behind him, ready to divert her, or physically take her down and drag her away if necessary, but thankfully she was distracted, head down, the grim downturn of her mouth visible under the veil. 

They arrived at the entrance to the restaurant, to be greeted by the maitre'd, a tall, slender Kaminoan dressed in gold and black; the casino style. Beyond, the interior was dark and hushed, diners from every corner of the galaxy consuming lavish dishes every bit as varied and exotic as the clientele.

The maitre’d guided them to their table, discreetly located in an alcove, lit by candles.

Rey looked to the window overlooking the racetrack and another empty table for two.

“I want that one,” she pointed.

“Apologies Madam,” the Kaminoan began, “but I’m afraid that table is reserved for-” 

“That’s my table,” she cut him off with a wave of her hand.

“That is Madam’s table,” the alien assured her, motioning her towards the table with a slight bow.

Finn groaned and rolled his eyes extravagantly. Rey sniggered, barely succeeding in keeping her composure as they followed the stately figure of the alien to the window table, where they took their seats, the attendants arranging her train and skirts before retreating from the room.

“I hate it when you do that,” Finn said.

Rey burst out laughing, unable to hold it any longer. “Oh come on, it never gets old.”

“It does, it’s really-”

She waved her hand. “It never gets old, FN.”

“It never gets old.” he agreed calmly, then widened his eyes in distress. “Fuck! Stop that shit!”

Rey convulsed with laughter, veil dancing a shimmy across her eyes. 

The neighboring diners glanced over at the disruptive pair, and Rey raised a hand again, only for it to be caught by Finn.

“Rey! No abusing the civilians.”

She relented, lowering her hand and Finn looked to the heavens. That headache was here to stay, and she’d not even had a drink yet. “You’re the worst.”

“But seriously,” she chuckled, “It's the best Force skill, hands down.”

“It’s an abuse of power. And a waste of your talents.”

“It's got us the best table in the place.”

“What would Luke and Leia think?”

“Spoilsport,” she tutted and removed the veil, setting it down on the table. “Come on, FN. I’m having some fun. There’s very little light in my life these days.“

“You’re getting rid of me,” he teased.

“Exactly.”

What did she mean by that? She was sad to see him go? It had been her idea, as he remembered. 

After making their orders, they received a carafe of Tuskan wine; the real thing, not synthesized. Finn watched her as she sipped from a crystal glass and looked out at the race track, quiet for a moment, then smirking to herself. Probably planning some new Force/Finn-abusing prank. Gods, she thought she was so hilarious. Sometimes she was. Or at least, Finn corrected himself, she could be quite amusing when she wasn’t being a pain. 

She looked down at her glass and chewed her lip, still oblivious to his gaze. Now he considered it, under the soft lighting of the restaurant, she looked good tonight. She was wearing cosmetics, a rare event. That dress, at first glance absurdly elaborate, was rather elegant, or perhaps she made it look that way. Occasionally he was taken by surprise, caught in a moment where the years and familiarity were forgotten and he saw her anew, not Rey the Scavenger, or Skywalker the Savior, but just a girl, and then he had to stop and catch himself from falling into something deep and dark that he might never find his way out of. He wouldn’t miss that. Not at all.

Relax Finn, enjoy the evening. When the hell else are you going to live like this on someone else’s credits. Make the most of the opportunities before you. However, does sitting in a fabulously expensive restaurant, dining with dodgy zillionaires, watching fathier races, make you part of what you vowed to pull down? Part of what Rose wanted to put her fist through? Not if it was just for one night, he decided. A reward for services rendered. He took a sip and watched the gamblers below as they celebrated victories, commiserated losses. 

“This is really cool.” Finn said, looking around. “Why have we never done anything like this before?”

“Always too busy working,” she replied. “Surviving. Fighting. What a ridiculous bloody life we lead.” 

Finn lifted his glass, “To a ridiculous bloody life. Long may it continue.”

She clinked hers against his “Cheers. Although your life is going to be a lot more boring without me to spice it up.”

“Says who? I’ve got plenty lined up.”

She shot him a look over the top of her glass.

“You doubt me? I’m looking forward to doing my own thing. I’ve been trailing around after you and Poe too much. I need to get out there and start my own ventures.”

“I don’t doubt you, really. You’ll do great,” she looked at him thoughtfully, “You’ll be better off without me.”

“Oh definitely.” Did she really mean that? She was harder to read when she was quiet.

“And what about you?” he asked, “Better off as well?”

“Absolutely. Of course,” she took another drink. “It’s such a pain having someone to look after. I work best alone.”

He looked at her dubiously. 

“Really,” she assured him, “Alone is my thing. I survived for years by myself, remember.”

“Bullshit. You were never happier than on Ajan Kloss, butting heads with Poe, hanging out with me and Chewie, taking long walks with Leia.”

“Whatever,” she scowled. “Anyway, the Council has lined up some new assistant for me already. Poor guy.” She produced the phone and brought up a message, displayed an attachment and turned it to face Finn. 

It showed an image of a man and some accompanying text, but calling the specimen before him merely ‘a man’ was doing him a terrible disservice. One foot rested on top of a huge vanquished beast of which only a small part was shown, as he stared purposefully into the distance, eyes narrowed and indomitable, scanning the horizon, ready for the next challenge. His dark dreadlocks and cape flowed dramatically behind him, blown by winds that could never bow him. His clothing appeared to consist mainly of leather straps and pouches designed to accentuate pecs carved from polished dark stone and all 27 of his gleaming abdominal muscles. In the background, storm clouds gathered, his mighty frame unable to contain the passion and violence within, which spilled out into the world around him to shape its elemental forces.

“Wait. This is his Council ID photo?” Finn asked in disbelief. His looked as if he’d been caught stealing at 3am after a 3 day bender. 

“Yeah. Impressive isn’t it.”

“His name’s really Lazor Stormbold?”

”That’s what it says. Not as good as Skywalker. Better than 2187.”

Finn ignored this running joke and coolly turned his attention to the racetrack. “Ok. Well. Have fun then,” he mumbled.

Rey was unable to contain a sly grin. “Finn. My darling FN. You’re not jealous are you?”

“Of course not. It’s a dirty job. He’s welcome to it.”

“Don’t worry. They all look like that until some Sith lops bits off them.”

“I’m not worried,” Finn dismissed her, casually watching the races below. 

“You realize you lasted longer than the previous three combined? Although this one looks like he has some stamina...” she mused, eyes wandering over the image of the titan before her.

“I do realize,” Finn interrupted. “So I better get while the going’s good.”

“To getting out while the going’s good,” she raised her glass, “Oh, how I envy you.”

  
  


\-----

  
  


The Ewok cutlets were even better than the ones the shuttle had rustled up. Hard to go wrong with Ewoks, but these were particularly good, as you would expect; juicy, falling off the bone, wonderfully marinated in something like Jandarra. Finn did his best not to recall an adventure vid he’d seen that had featured the furry little guys; brave caravan, or something like that.

Rey finished her meal and sat back, hand on stomach. She took another sip of Tuskan wine. Was that her 5th or 6th glass? She was hitting it hard tonight. The veil was back on, to make sure she wouldn’t forget it, she said, but positioned higher up like a drunk, sloppy tiara.

“Shaak roast was wonderful. I think I’m going to bust out of this.”

“First time I’ve seen you wear anything like that,” Finn remarked, taking in the elaborate outfit again. He’d switched from the wine to merenzane gold and the evening was getting more blurred with each sip, “I’d like to see you at work in that. Having to step on petals would put you at a big disadvantage in a duel.” 

“Not really me, is it. I’m more an activewear kind of girl. But my stylists said I needed to ‘push my personal boundaries’, ‘escape my comfort zone’, ‘evolve my narrative’. All that crap.”

“You’ve got a stylist now?”

“Stylists. There’s a team of them. Stylists, brand managers, creative consultants. I don’t know, they just turn up.”

“For what? What do they do?”

“Make people love me, basically,” she admitted.

“And I thought I had a tough job.”

“Meeowww. Says you. I think I make this thing look good."

"So...” she changed the subject extremely casually, looking around the restaurant, “Who were you on the phone to earlier?”

“Oh, nobody.” Finn said, but he knew she knew.

“Looked quite emotional.”

Finn shrugged. 

“It wasn’t Rose was it?”

“Oh yeah, that,” Finn feigned realization. “Yeah, I had a nice chat with Rose while I was waiting for you. Good to talk to her again.”

“So are you going to hook up with her once you’re shot of me?” 

“I don’t know. She wants to, you know, but she’s busy building a religion. And as I keep telling you, I need to break out, do something new.”

“Good,” Rey remarked quietly, as she continued to glance around the restaurant.

“Still, you never know, we have a special connection.” 

Her eyes flicked back to his face.

“What?" he protested, "You're always a bit weird about Rose.”

“No I'm not. Why would I be weird?"

“No idea," he considered this a moment, "You're not jealous are you?”

“Don't be ridiculous. I’m officially the most awesome babe in the galaxy. How could I be jealous?” she scoffed, “I just worry about you with that psycho. That’s all.”

“A lot less dangerous than hanging around with you.”

“True,” she said sadly.

A sudden distraction, and she glanced to her side. “Yes.” she muttered, “I’m getting to it,” and then “I am not. Leave it.”. Solo again. What were they talking about?

She finished off her glass, reached for the bottle, poured another, downed it. Uh oh.

“Finn. Darling. I have an ulterior motive this evening.” She chewed her lip.

That sinking feeling again. “Ok.”

“As you know, Ben and I have this relationship. Obviously there are some obstacles that complicate it.”

“You being alive and him being dead.”

She shot him a look. “‘Corporeally challenged’ is the correct term. He is unable to directly interact with the physical plane, that’s all.”

“Ok…” Finn doubted that was his only challenge, but let it pass.

“So that makes any kind of physical intimacy difficult.” She looked really uncomfortable now. 

“Right…” As was often the case with Rey, he was getting a bad feeling about this.

“However, he has worked something out.” She took another drink. “I need your body.”

“Fuck no,” he held his hands up, “No more Force healing experiments. Are you kidding? I’m never going to get the feeling back in those toes again.” He couldn’t believe she had the nerve to ask; he was lucky to still have a liver.

“No, no,” she looked to the heavens for the resolve required to spit out the words. “I need your body for sex. There, I asked.”

“What?” He must have misheard.

“Ben has perfected a technique,” she wore a perfect poker face as she explained in clipped tones, “whereby he will be able to occupy your consciousness and senses for a short period of time. He will be able to experience what you experience and direct your actions to a limited extent. It's an extension and amalgamation of Force projection and mind control. Genius really. He’s amazingly talented. The things he could achieve if he were still ali- corporeally unchallenged. ”

Finn let this sink in for a moment. “So let me get this straight. You and I have sex. Ben is in my head and gets to experience it.” 

“Yes,” the mask wasn’t cracking, “we thought this would be the best way to develop our relationship and take it to the next level.”

“So even corporeally challenged guys want to get it on?”

She shrugged.

“Why me? Why not some random stud? The Council could have a lottery.”

She relaxed, the mask falling away, and she reached across the table to touch his arm. “It can't just be anyone," she couldn't look him in the eye. "I need someone I can trust. Can you imagine if people found out?” 

“Are you sure it’ll work?”

“He’s experimented on other couples to perfect the technique.”

“Wait, so he’s been…” Finn stopped short. He was fairly sure that Force sex with random girls was cheating, even if it was in pursuit of having sex with your actual girlfriend, but did she really need him to point that out? “Rey, are you cool with all this? Seriously?”

“If it keeps us together,” she shrugged. “Are you cool with it? That’s the question.”

Was he cool with it? It sounded like the worst idea since Maz told him to go find some guy in a casino. The worst idea since Anakin opted for the non-flame retardant pants. He would have to be the biggest fucking idiot in the galaxy to think letting that bastard Solo into his head was anything but a complete nightmare hellride poised and waiting to happen. The biggest sucker in the whole of Canto Bight. 

But. She did look hot tonight.

He downed the last of the merenzane and slammed the glass onto the table.  
  
“Cooler than a wampa in a whiteout. I’m there for you.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You made it to the end! Yay! Thanks for reading!
> 
> This chapter was tougher than expected, but that always seems to be the case :-/  
> After the slow burn, now we get to the chapter I've been waiting to write, the reason I started this fic - some really explicit Rey-Finn sex. All their kinks (and Ben's) are revealed!
> 
> (kidding, not exactly...)


	3. Chapter 3

The lightsaber spun on the polished stone floor. Dark and worn, its scars held stories of battles against evils, empires and other, more hidden, demons. 

Its revolutions slowed gently, perfectly balanced on the black slab shot through with veins of gold; the Casino style, a language of luxury calculated to speak to races and species that spanned the galaxy. Finally the saber came to rest, pointing at the girl that sat cross legged before it. Rey raised an eyebrow and swayed slightly but was held upright by the voluminous mound of black mesh, silk skirts and trains piled around her. The muffled sound of a hit holo-soap leaked into the bedroom from the neighboring room of the dimly lit, spacious suite.

Finn, sat opposite, offered a dark blue bottle, the remains of an excellent Andoan White sloshing around inside, but she raised her chin and shooed it away.

Rey pulled the veil down from where she’d perched it on the top of her head until it covered her eyes again.

“Lando,” she said.

“No way!” Finn exclaimed, “When?”

“Right before we left Ajan Kloss for the last time. Another search for a father figure gone wrong. I should give those up.”

“You should. He is one charming dude though. I think I almost ended up there myself once or twice.”

“He really is,” Rey laughed, “He knows how to treat a lady, I’ll say that much. No regrets.”

“Good. Lando’s the best. Ok, spin.”

She repositioned the veil on the top of her head and reached forward, skirts and trains rusting, to spin the blackened lightsaber. This time when it stopped, it pointed towards Finn.

“How do I know you’re not cheating?” he asked.

“Trust,” she answered, a picture of innocence.

Finn considered his options a moment and groaned, reluctantly raising the bottle to take a gulp of the Andoan, sputtering and choking into his fist.

“Steady on,” Rey tutted, and looked pointedly at him, “You’ve got a job to do, remember? Go on, spin.”

He finished up coughing to spin again. This time, it came to rest pointing at the girl in black. 

“Ok, ok,” she inhaled and paused, mainly for dramatic effect rather than to precipitate a decision. “The Amazing Miss Bliss.”

“Zorii! Man, Poe would be pissed,” he chuckled, shaking his head. He’d always thought of Rey as inexperienced, somewhat chaste even, but she’d kept her liaisons well hidden. 

“As she would whisper to me on those chill Krownest nights,” she lowered her voice, soft and husky, “‘Bliss isn’t the name I was born with. I earned it.’. And oh - my - god. She wasn’t kidding. Phew.” She fanned herself theatrically. 

Finn pictured the scene in as much detail as it deserved, which took some time, and shook his head. “Video, or it never happened.”

“Nice try,” Rey scoffed.

“Worth a shot.”

She spun the saber, and this time it stopped at Finn. 

“Ok, ok,” he said, resigned, “Don’t judge.”

“I never would.”

“You would.”

“You have such a low opinion of me,” she said and reached over to take his hand and look into his eyes, “This is a safe space, FN. Just you and me. No judgments.”

“I think she put something in my drink.”

Rey's eyes widened in anticipation.

“Maz.”

Rey exploded into shrieks of laughter, slapping her thigh as Finn held his hands up in exasperated resignation. Her laughter faded to a long, deep sigh as she wiped her eyes and raised them to his, “Me too, actually.”

Finn nodded. “Thanks. I feel better for sharing.” 

“Yet another traumatic experience we have in common,” Rey announced, slurring ‘experience’ a little. “She definitely puts something in the drinks.”

Finn shivered. “My memories of that night are vague and disturbing.”

“I remember a very rough tongue,” Rey grimaced.

“I suspect she got Poe as well, but when I tried to pin him down, he went all white and silent.” 

“Poor Poe. Go on then, spin.”

Finn reached out to the sabre and grasped it to give another spin. The glare of the bright yellow blade was sudden and blinding as it extended, piercing the cloud of black skirts just to the side of where Rey sat.

“Fuck!” Finn scrambled to turn it off quickly, mouth agape, unable to tear his eyes from the neat hole in the mound of fabric, “You ok?”

“That was close,” Rey said mildly, observing the wisps of smoke rising from her skirts. 

“You left the power cell in?” Finn gasped, appalled.

“I thought I took it out.”

“Playing ‘spin the lightsaber’ drunk isn’t a good idea.”

“You almost snoked me.”

“I could have snoked both of us,” Finn said, “But I think I know why we’re doing this.”

“Why?”

“You’re stalling.”

“I’m not stalling. Why would I stall?”

“It was your idea!” Finn protested.

“You looked like you needed to stall. I was helping you out.”

“I don’t need to stall. I’m good with this. It’s just sex.”

“Right,” she agreed, “We’re adults. We can handle this. It’s a transaction. I get help with my relationship problem. And you get...” she stopped there.

“And I get...” he prompted.

“The satisfaction of helping a friend out.”

“Right, right, that.”

Rey’s gaze was drawn off to one side. “Yeah, yeah. Keep it in your trousers.” 

She turned back to Finn. “Ben’s losing it. He just about kept his shit together while we binged ‘Clone Clowns of Coruscant’, but spin-the-lightsaber broke him.”

“‘Clone Clowns’ is the best though.”

“Right. His loss,” Rey nodded, “but Ben likes his holos more angsty and dark. More ‘Tears of the Nightsisters’.”

“No shit. That's a surprise.”

She looked into space again, tutted and shook her head, “This tantrum is turning epic, even by his standards. So…” she rose to her feet, with a little difficulty, and gestured to Finn with both hands. “Let’s get down to it.” 

Finn removed his shirt while Rey nodded with approval, appraising him with hands on hips. 

“Keeping in shape.”

“Of course. Sith don’t take no prisoners.”

“Unzip me.”

She turned and bundled the skirts and trains in front of her, then held up her hair, offering the nano-zip tab, close to her hairline at the top of the high lace collar. The upper and back of the gown appeared to be constructed almost entirely from swirls of matt black spider web and looked perilously delicate.

Finn found the tiny black tab at the nape of her neck, carefully placed a fingertip on it and stroked downwards, the fabric parting along an invisible seam, webs dropping away in whispers of black to expose pale skin. His finger swept the curve of her back slowly, skimming her spine all the way to a point just below the small of her back where he stopped in surprise. 

So many scars. Cuts, a wound from a vibro weapon, a plasma burn. He’d always believed he knew her as well as anyone, but one simple act had revealed the extent of how much was still hidden from him: her long, lonely survival on Jakku, the post-Exegol madness, years of hunting for The New Glory. And what else? 

He traced a pale, ragged line across her shoulder blade. “You could have these removed, you know.”

“No,” Rey murmured, “Scars are stories. Without them, I might forget.” And Finn found himself overwhelmed by a longing to hear her tell the tales of trials, horrors and misadventures that had marked her, and understand the landscape of her life more completely.

She shrugged off the dress to let it tumble into a mound of mesh and dark fabric, leaving her in nothing but matching underwear: black, delicate mesh that clung to her skin through some kind of sensual sorcery, linked by ebony threads that were barely there at all. She turned and directed him to the bed, “Sit here.”

They sat facing each other on the edge of the bed, and she took both of his hands. Her fingers were cool and dry. Finn was sure his felt warm and sweaty. 

“Ok. Just relax,” she said.

“Rey.”

“Yes?”

“I have to ask.”

“Ok.”

“Are the petal girls going to be here all night?” he indicated the two girls who stood attentively at the side of the bed, having just finished covering it in a fragrant layer of white petals. They smiled at him.

“Oh, right. You want them to go?” Rey asked, “Honestly I’d completely forgotten they were there. I think I’m born to live a life of privilege. Must be that Palpatine blood,” she reflected in satisfaction.

She pointed to the door, and the girls slumped then walked off, huffing and dangling their baskets sullenly. One of them winked and gave a little wave to Finn, who watched them close the door behind them, turned back to Rey and took a breath. “Ok, better,” he clapped his hands and rubbed them together, “Now, how do we do this?”

She took his hands and laced their fingers together, looking into his eyes. “Relax. And open your mind.” 

“So I’ll still be in control, right?” He held her gaze, not daring to break it, the two of them entwined ever more closely.

“Yes. He’ll see through your eyes, feel what you feel.” She leaned closer.

He’d always thought her eyes were an almost colorless grey, but now he noticed they were actually a mix of green and blue, shot through with brown that was almost orange in places. From afar they were dull and unremarkable, but when he looked again, really looked, close up they were extraordinary. How had he never noticed? Why had he never noticed? Years of orbiting each other at a distance that concealed beauty, reducing it to the common and everyday.

She leaned in closer, their faces almost touching now. 

“Empty your mind,” she whispered, “Remember your training. Open yourself to the Force.”

Their lips touched, the world grew dark and fell away...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for making it to the end! I love it when that happens. Makes my day :) I really hope you enjoyed it.
> 
> Rey's POV in the next chapter, to be posted next week. I wrote what I thought would be a chapter, but it was >5000 words and I've realised that works are usually posted in shorter chunks. So, after lots of indecision, I broke it into two. Hope that was the right thing to do...


	4. Chapter 4

Finn opened his eyes. 

No, not opened - they’d never been closed. He was seeing through them again, as if the world had been switched back on, like a light. He was looking at the ceiling of the bedroom, lying on his back, on the bed. He was naked.

He turned his head. Rey was lying on her side next to him, watching him, breathing deeply, covered in a thin sheen of perspiration. 

“My FN...” she purred.

“What happened?” he remembered a kiss, and then… he was here. Nothing else.

He sat bolt upright and immediately regretted the impulse, wincing at a sharp pain in his back and a seething mess of hurt all trapped in his head. It was too early for a hangover. What had Solo done to him?

“What do you mean, what happened?” a look of concern on her face.

“We were sat on the bed, and the next thing I know, I wake up here.”

“What?” she frowned in confusion, “You mean you weren’t…” she gesticulated helplessly with one hand, “there for it?”

“No.” 

“So Ben was in control the entire time?”

“I guess.” Finn groaned and attempted to rearrange his spine.

Of course. Solo had fucked both of them. He should have known. He had known. What exactly was unexpected in this turn of events? Nothing. He knew it was asking for trouble, and he’d walked right into it, willingly, for the most obvious of reasons. He slumped back down onto the bed and massaged his temples.

“Ben?” she sat up and scanned the room, “Ben!”

Stars he was tired, the Merenzane, the Andoan, the hour and the experience of having his mind and body taken over by an evil bastard, it was all catching up with him fast. He could deal with this later, in the morning. Actually, he’d had a really cool evening. The best in a while. A long while.

She was in the other room now, pacing and talking to Solo. She sounded angry.

Damn this bed was comfortable. It would be even more comfortable under the sheets. He slipped between them and hoped the headache would be gone in the morning. Tomorrow was a new day, after all.

  
  


\-----

  
  


Stirring from sleep, the suite in darkness, fingers in his hair and a soft whisper in his ear. “FN...” 

Wetness on his cheek. He turned over, pulled up the sheets and fell back into dreams. 

A trail of white petals led him through bland hotel corridors that twisted left and right endlessly, the dark figure ahead glimpsed only for the briefest of moments before she rounded the next corner, and the next, black train flowing behind her, white blooms in her wake. A sudden anxiety pulled him forward and increased his pace, fueled by an instinctive need to see the woman, to touch her, to hold her. His desire to reach the woman in black grew to desperation as he dashed headlong on slippery tiled floors, sliding around corners, crashing into walls, the pursuit growing ever more frantic with every fleeting, lost glance as she remained distant, beyond his grasp. 

Another corner rounded, and before him a long, narrow corridor, at the opposite end a door closing on a shadow while white flakes drifted to the floor. He sprinted the length of the passage to reach the door, open it and step through. 

The Falcon hummed around him, the soft clicks and beeps of its systems the only sound in the main cabin as it sped through the stars. Only a few paces in front of him was the woman, her back to him, face hidden, still and silent in a black gown, its trails and skirts filling the craft like a flood of night shot through with veins of casino gold. 

He stepped towards her, and wordlessly she raised dark hair to expose the nape of her neck to his touch. The tip of his finger on a tiny black tab, slid downwards over her skin, smooth and cool save for the soft ridges of her spine and the feel of her body trembling as she sobbed. The dress fell away into drifting webs of darkness as he tried to hold her, wrap her in his arms to wipe away tears and tell her he would make things right, but he was left holding nothing but wisps that decayed and disappeared, slipping through his fingers. The blackness under his feet became a void and he was failing. 

  
  


\-----

  
  


Light seeping into sleep. The sound of the waves crashing on rocks. Finn opened his eyes to see the glow of the dawn filtering in through golden drapes, filling the room with an amber warmth. A new day. New life. 

He sat up, memories of the previous night struggling back into his consciousness. Dinner: Ewoks, delicious. Chilling here: Clone Clowns was hilarious. Spin the lightsaber: fun but potentially deadly, mental note to not repeat that. Rey’s scars, her eyes. The missing sex, Solo somehow taking over his mind to shut him out. Rey confused and angry. Crashing out. 

He should be angry as well, he supposed. He’d been taken advantage of, by Solo at least, by Rey perhaps, although it seemed Solo had lied to her. But he felt more disappointed than anything; in himself for falling for it, in her for going along with Solo’s plans.

Why waste energy on anger? This was a time for positivity. He was moving on, starting a new chapter in his life, and last night’s clusterfuck was a very timely reminder of exactly why this was the right thing to do. She was a mess he had to leave behind.

Maybe clusterfuck was a bit strong. It hadn’t been a complete disaster; he’d been having a good time up to that point. A great time, really. When had they last spent an evening out like that? Must have been years.

He dressed quickly and walked to the window to watch the dawn, the sun yet to rise, the glow on the horizon reflected on the Sea of Cantonica spanning the vista before him. What better way to greet the day and a new start than to watch the sunrise over Cantonica? 

Was there a coffee maker in this place? That would top it off nicely. His eyes dropped to the table beside him where he saw a sheet of paper and Rey’s spidery scrawl on it.

_Sorry for everything. Gone to play the slots._

Fuck.

Not his problem any more. He was out of this. Someone else can handle it.

Slot machines, though. Shit. He should get over there.

Compromise: he would go to check, but not quickly. He freshened up in the bathroom as the low whine of the evacuation alarms started, slung his tux jacket over his shoulder and left the suite at a leisurely pace. 

  
  


\-----

  
  


The lift doors opened to show anxious faces, a flow of patrons away from the gaming floor and members of the Canto Bight Police Department headed in the opposite direction, hefting blasters and batons, talking urgently into communicators. Fear and confusion were in the eyes of public and police alike and the smell of burning was thick in the air. Finn’s stomach rumbled. What he really wanted to do was find the breakfast buffet - he was sure it was somewhere on this level - but instead he grudgingly joined the security staff to push against the flow, towards the gaming rooms. Would they close the buffet? Probably. Just his luck. Could really use that coffee. 

It took him a moment to recognize the strangled mass of twisted metal and splintered plastics that sat in the middle of a thoroughfare as a slot machine. It sat where it had landed, as if crushed and tossed by a huge and powerful hand. Slots were a decidedly bad idea if you had Dark Side issues.

He rounded the corner into the main gaming room and saw the rest of them. Dozens of machines reduced to burnt, shredded scraps, the smoking scars of Force Lightning twisting along the walls and ceiling. Casino security milled around, some holding extinguishers, ushering the public out of the area. 

Finn surveyed the scene for a moment wondering where she would have headed. He strolled past the destruction, away from the main gaming rooms to a quieter space occupied only by the squat, hulking shapes of heavily armored police, a tape barring further progress and beyond that the balconies. 

He ambled up to the barrier and was met by an armored officer who raised a hand to bring him to a halt. The stress on the man’s face was visible even through his visor.

“Exit the casino immediately, Sir. It's not safe here.” He indicated the path back where Finn had come from.

“I'm with her.” Finn nodded towards the balconies. “I better see how she’s doing. Talk her out of burning the casino down and throwing it into the sea. Maybe she’s just hangry,” he shrugged. 

The policeman looked Finn up and down, then glanced nervously at the balconies. “Go on then,” he said, shaking his head.

Finn ducked under the barrier and walked to the balcony where they had met the previous night. Rey stood there, in shorts, sandals, tank top and spectacularly disheveled hair, elbows on the balustrade, watching the sunrise with exhausted eyes. A handful of CBPD speeders and jetsticks buzzed back and forth at a suitably discreet distance. 

Finn took up the spot next to her. “You’ve made quite a mess,” he remarked casually.

“Yeah. I'm good at that.” She sounded calm and resigned.

“Told you to stay away from those slots.”

“Among other things. I should listen to you more.”

“I'm sure they had it coming though.” 

“They did. Fucking machines.”

“So why play them?”

“They have to come up all hearts someday, right? I should know better, but I always hope.” she sighed. “And maybe I felt like doing something stupid and pointless and fucking things up even more.”

Her eyes fell to the town below. “I’m sorry about last night.”

“Don’t be. I’m the idiot that walked right into it.”

She looked at him. “Why?”

Finn’s gaze remained fixed on the view. “You know why.”

Rey stayed silent and looked out to the Sea of Cantonica where the rising sun played on the water, as if it had been shattered into a thousand glittering pieces that were being thrown this way and that at the mercy of the waves.

“I was scared he would leave if I didn’t do it,” she said eventually, “I thought I could fix everything and get you both to stay. I don’t know, I didn’t think really, just hoped. Stupid.”

“Why do you want to keep him around so badly?”

“Because he stayed. Nobody else did.” Rey hesitated, adrift in memories for a moment. “I was lost after Exegol, really lost. I needed someone, and he was there.”

“I didn’t know,” Finn felt a sting of shame as he recalled those days and hints of coded cries for help, “All that stuff with Poe, it seemed important at the time.” 

“I tried to hide it,” she said “I thought he was the only one that could help me. He knows what it's like to fight the Dark Side. And we’re bound together by the Force. I believed that was important, a good thing, at the time.” 

“And now I’m leaving you again,” he shouldn’t feel bitter about it, but there it was. 

“Yes. Do what you said you would. Go out there. Be all you can be.”

“Rey…” he reached out to take her hand, and they faced each other, almost, but not quite touching.

“Go. I don’t deserve you,” she whispered.

He pressed his lips to her forehead, to stop time, to take them someplace that wasn’t here and now, even if it was just for a handful of seconds that slipped quickly through his fingers before he stepped away.

“See you around, Rey.”

“Not if I see you first, FN,” a broken half-smile on her lips.

Finn started to turn and hesitated. “You need to get out of this. The Council, they know it’s killing you. They’ll let you fall to the Dark Side and then they’ll cut you off, or worse.”

She tried to smile again, “I’ll be fine. I’m Rey Skywalker. Go.”

He turned and walked, past the police who asked questions that he barely heard and didn’t answer, back into the gaming rooms to merge with the stream of confused, anxious aliens that would take him far away from here. He felt numb and distant, disconnected from the man that was leaving. Keep putting one foot in front of the other. Step after step. Don’t look back. You’re really doing this. Do not look back.

  
  


\-----

  
  


Rey watched him walk away, ducking under the cordon, past the guys in armor that kept nervously glancing in her direction, further into the main hall of the casino. Would he turn to look? She lost sight of him for a moment, her view blocked by various beings. There he was again, still moving away. Then behind a droid. A glimpse of the back of his head. And then he was gone, lost in the crowds. 

He was gone.

Of course he was gone. They all leave.

And she’s in the desert again.

A hot dry wind on her face, a hand on her arm. 

Squinting into the sun. Watching her entire world fly away, higher and higher. 

She can’t move. She can’t breathe. 

5 years old and she doesn’t understand. 

She just doesn’t fucking understand why they won’t stay but it has to be her fault, it has to be something she’s done because if she was good then they would love her and they’d stay, they’d fucking stay and hold her and tell her it would all be ok, not leave her all alone and so, so scared.

Everyone leaves. She doesn’t deserve them. She’s known ever since she stood on a dune and watched a ship disappear into the desert sky that she doesn’t deserve a life lived with love and peace and laughter and people that care, people to share these things with. There must be something dark and broken in her that pushes them all away. Something that can’t be fixed. A bloodline, a destiny she could never escape even though she tried so hard, and ran so very far. She even changed her name, not that it makes any difference when she knows all too well what she is. 

She’s crying, she realizes and turns away quickly to the view over the town. Did they see? Legends don’t cry. 

Get your shit together girl. It’s for the best. Absolutely. Too many sleepless nights worrying about getting him killed on one of these ridiculous missions. It had been too close a couple of times now. That would have been too much. It would have pushed her so far over the edge there would have been nothing left of her. 

So why had she tried to keep him with that absurd sex thing? Because one day it has to come up all hearts, right? Wouldn’t it have been good to come back to the shuttle after completing another assignment, Finn waiting for her with a quip, a cheeky smile, a massage and (oh yes) more? Nice dream, you fucking idiot. And a ridiculous, selfish waste of his talents. He was smart to leave this wreck behind. 

Anyway, she’s with Ben, their destinies entwined forever, joined by the Force. Their connection refusing to be bound by space and time and even death itself. She walks with him, two paths made one, leading her along a road that she cannot escape, even if she had the courage to try. Who is she to deny the Force?

But still, if only he could have stayed.

Now she’s alone again, as it should be, as it always is eventually. She knows all about alone, about numbing yourself to the days and weeks and years of living with something that’s missing but still cuts as deep as a saber. 

Finn’s gone, so deal with it. It’s a net positive; watching out for him had been a source of considerable stress and distraction and you don’t have to deal with that any more. Let’s take in this fabulous sunrise and focus on our breathing. Legends and heroes don’t let it all go to shit over something like this. They learn their lessons, put it behind them, stay focused on the task at hand and rise to the challenge. And Rey Skywalker is nothing if not a legend and a hero. So act like it. Tuck that sniveling little five-year old away somewhere dark and forgotten and be the fucking legend. Be the hero everyone expects. You have the love and admiration of billions, and that’s worth something isn’t it? Let’s bask in that sunlight even if all the people you love and respect are gone. The galaxy is watching, as always.

Was that police guy on a speeder actually trying to take a selfie with her in the background? The fucking nerve. She levelled her index finger at him and cocked her thumb up. 

“Peew.” 

The front stabilizer of the speeder crumpled and immediately threw it into a rapid downwards spiral towards the streets below, the pilot clinging to his vehicle in desperation. She leaned over the balustrade to see the craft smash into a cobbled street, fortunately empty thanks to the early hour. The pilot was thrown clear, sprawled on his back. She watched until she saw one arm move slowly. No fatal harm done then. Probably. A bit naughty, but rather satisfying. 

She needed to get out of here, get back on track, back on the mission: the second half of Tantalus. The Council would expect results. The New Glory would bring a new era of stability to the galaxy, and it was all on her, or so they kept telling her. 

She couldn’t go back to the suite - that would take her thoughts in all the wrong directions - so it’s to her ship. She must look a mess, she realized, but there was little that could be done about that. Were heroes and the most awesome babes in the galaxy allowed to let it all go once in a while? How was a legend supposed to look after a night out? Better than this. Tidy the hair, adjust the top, chin high, don’t stop and act like you own the fucking place.

Rey turned and marched away from the balcony, towards the casino. A combination of fear and indecision rooted the guards to the spot, and they made no attempt to impede her. She severed the security tape with the Force and strode into the gaming area, which by now was mercifully occupied only by a scattering of staff and police. She felt eyes upon her but didn’t acknowledge them, keeping her gaze focused on the route towards the speed-link that would take her to Corusca Resort’s private spaceport.

  
  


\-----

  
  


Finn squeezed into the transport just before the doors slid shut, shoving forwards to ensure his two large kit bags weren’t caught and eliciting mumbles of disapproval from neighboring passengers. Breathing hard, he relaxed and leant against the glass as the shuttle started to glide out of the terminus, feeling a tingle of anticipation in his fingertips, a tremor of excitement in his gut. A galaxy beckoned and with it a chance to make good on plans and schemes. A new life. 

He closed his eyes and saw locks of dark hair falling across teary eyes and lips forced into an uncertain smile. The image pierced his heart, unexpected and sharp. Stop. Leave it, put it aside. It’s hard, yes, but who said doing the right thing would be easy? He opened his eyes to squint into the sun as the transport emerged from the underground complex and into the day, and smiled in spite of himself. The future was bright. 

  
  


\-----

  
  


Rey strode forwards across the open expanse of the spaceport, dazzlingly bright under the morning sun, the elegant white curves of the Beltane before her, the remains of another overly officious droid behind. The question of whether it had been legally sentient and any possible penalties were pushed from her mind; it shouldn’t have been so picky about exit slot bookings. Concierge services at the Corusca were nothing if not efficient, and her luggage had already been delivered, the ship smoothly loading the collection of cases as she approached. 

Detecting her presence, the craft opened a portal in its side, thousands of seamless panels disengaging and retreating in an elaborately choreographed swirl to reveal a previously invisible entrance. The doorway formed a dark circle against the glare of daylight reflecting from the ship’s alabaster surface, hiding the unlit interior in shadows. Rey advanced without hesitation, stepping through to leave the light behind, the portal closing with a soft hiss as the ship swallowed her. 

She stood in silence, allowing the blackness to envelop her, the way ahead obscured in the moments before her eyes adjusted, but aware that her path was certain nonetheless. It felt inevitable, a way that had called to her during so many sleepless, lonely nights filled with self-hate and doubt, promising her a release from the pain. The darkness welcomed her with an embrace as old as the Force itself. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for getting to the end! Phew. Always good to see you in the end notes. Really hope you enjoyed it :) 
> 
> Now we're getting down to it. Two more chapters. Hope I can figure out the finale... Can't stop now! OMG. Deep breaths...


	5. Ghosts - 1

.  
Pantolomin - Azure Shores  
.  
Coruscant - Golden Age  
.

She’d played both of those quite a few times already. Always something new to see in the Coruscant vid, but it invariably left her a little sad, nostalgic for times she’d never even experienced. Not what she was looking for right now. Something warmer...

Rey shifted and sank a little deeper into the soft, welcoming curves of the sofa, pulling her robes and towels around her, still wet and chilly from a much-needed shower. The ship was completely silent save for a muted orchestral arrangement that filled the cabin at a suitably soothing volume. Nothing to give away the fact that she was racing towards Ziost as fast as the ship’s state of the art Girodyne drives could take her.

She waved her hand at the wall panel, scrolling through the list of vistas.  
  


.  
Wroona - Endless Blue  
.  
Tython - Hidden Temples  
.

She loved to watch the forests and peaks of Tython, but not today.

An automated platform rolled up, bearing a small bowl of a hot spiced drink she’d selected from the menus a minute earlier. Something to warm her up and wash down the excellent dinner. Ewok cutlets again, though not quite as delicious as last time. Was the temperature in here lower than usual? She’d had difficulty with the environment manager and… he’d fixed it. Well, whatever, if he could master it, so could she. Later.

She turned her attention back to the panel. Let’s see. Something comforting...  
  


.  
Thyferra - Lost Lands  
.  
Tatooine - Jundland Dawn  
.  
Sullust - Obsidian Beauty  
.

Gods, Sullust was amazing. So dramatic, but not what she wanted. 

Wait, Tatooine? She barely contained a laugh. What was that doing in a list of the most scenic places in the galaxy? It was probably included because the planet had acquired a mythical quality in recent years due to its importance in the Skywalker legend. Even more so with Luke’s passing. Her memories of the place were fond with a dash of sadness. Why not?

“Tatooine,” she commanded and the panels of the living area shifted and faded into darkness, displaying a point of view inside the twisting sandstone canyons of Jundland, the first light of the dawn visible as a dim glow above the walls ahead. Memories of the cool, sharp nip of desert dawns and early starts in the dim half-light, shivered into her head. 

She sipped at the drink. A bit like Chav, but not as sweet. Perfect.

“What are you doing here?” Luke said.

Rey started, barely managing to avoid a spillage. She had never got used to the sudden appearances, and it had been a while since the last one. What had she done to deserve this, she wondered as she collected herself. 

“You mean Tatooine or on this shuttle?”

“Take your pick,” he reclined on the chair opposite, wrapped in Jedi robes and glowing softly, observing her with a wry smile. The same old Luke, evoking the same old bittersweet memories but always a welcome sight, all the same.

“Umm, Tatooine’s the closest thing this has to Jakku?”

He raised an eyebrow. “You really want to go back to Jakku?”

“Ok. Actually, it caught my eye, and I thought of you, and how it’s another thing we had in common.”

“Growing up on a desert world.”

“Growing up an orphan on a desert world. Are you here to see me, or this?” she nodded towards the canyon, which was growing lighter, the silence punctuated by the distant chatter of insect life and smaller mammals emerging to meet the day. 

“Both,” he smiled. 

“Ok,” she smiled back, “Is this the famous Beggars Canyon?”

“No. That was further north,” he watched the scene, talking in the images and sounds, “Despite what the legends say, they weren’t all bad times, you know.”

Rey sipped her drink and waited for him to continue, but he appeared content to watch the vista for a moment. She shouldn’t let her time with Luke slip by. His visits had grown less frequent over the past few years, and now she thought about it, there was something she had always intended to bring up but had never gotten around to in their previous fleeting encounters. She shifted around to face him more directly. 

“I never told you, but after Exegol, they wanted me to set up a Jedi academy,” she glanced down at the steaming bowl, “The thought terrified me.”

“It wasn’t that I didn’t want to,” she insisted, “But I felt like I was trapped, going down the same path you’d already walked. I was scared of where it would lead.”

“Our twin paths,” Luke nodded knowingly. 

“Orphan on a desert world. Escaping, on the Falcon. Watching a father figure die by a red saber and later, the same killer refusing to kill us, turning against his master instead. Learning from a Jedi master in a remote place and leaving too soon. The more I learned about you, the more I was struck by history repeating itself. Everything was happening again, to me.”

Luke said nothing, just watched her, so she took a sip of the hot drink and continued.

“That’s how the Force works isn’t it, moving us around and around in cycles. That’s why you were on Ahch-To, to break that cycle of Light and Dark, Jedi and Sith orbiting each other. I was scared that if I tried to rebuild the Order, I’d still be stuck on the same path as you.”

“You were scared you’d fail, as I did.”

“Yes,” she was ashamed to admit it. Rebuilding the Order would have been a noble mission.

“But you almost ended up a hermit on Ahch-to anyway.”

“Yes,” Rey laughed, ”I almost took a short-cut straight to Ahch-to.” Luke smiled back. “All I have to offer in my defence is that I was exhausted, I’d spent, like, the entire week permanently traumatized and sleep deprived,” she gestured helplessly, “and it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Luke chuckled. “Admit it, you missed the blue milk.”

“I said traumatized, not insane. I thought the Caretakers would be missing me. Anyway, thanks for saving me from that.” 

“You’re welcome. So that’s why you’re here,” he said, “Fear of following me.”

“When the Council came up with this mission, I jumped at the chance. I thought it would break me free of that path.”

“Fear drives you.”

“Fear of following your path,” she confirmed, “Fear of myself. Fear of…”.

“...of being abandoned.” Luke completed for her.

She looked him in the eye and nodded. That fear still cut the deepest. It was the oldest.

“So many fears,” he said with a sigh.

“I try to add a new one every couple of years. Keeps me on my toes.”

“And you know what Master Yoda said about fear.”

“Everyone knows. But it's hard to stop when there are so many things to be scared of,” she paused a breath before asking, “How do I stop?”

“By confronting it. Confronting fear is the destiny of a Jedi, but sometimes we need help. My fear led me to hide. You forced me to face my mistake. Alone, I never would have.”

She sipped again and considered his words, bathed in the glow of Tatoo II as it peeked into the canyon, filling it with an amber light. 

“So I should quit this, face my fear and rebuild the Order? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Not exactly.” Luke smiled at her gently, and she felt 10 years old again, struggling to keep up with lessons in a shadowy, sweltering Anchorite classroom.

“I wish you could have stayed,” she breathed, unable to take her eyes from him, as if the simple act of watching him could anchor him here. She wished he could stay right now, though she knew it was impossible. How many seconds did they have left?

“I did what I had to do.” 

“I’ll never know how. I worry I’m being selfish. This New Glory mission, I wanted it, and they keep telling me it's going to bring light to the galaxy, and all that,” she waved her hand in vague circles, “But it's not good for me. There’s too much killing involved.” 

She stared down into the bowl, “And the problem is, I’ve started to enjoy it. I lie awake at night and think about what I’m going to do to them and why they deserve it and how, in the big picture, in the end, it's doing good because the mission justifies it, and I’m eliminating followers of the Dark Side, which is good, right? That’s wrong, I know it’s wrong but I can’t help it. Believing that makes sense of everything.”

Luke watched her. “The Dark Side deceives.”

She nodded. “I still hear his voice. I dream about him, and Exegol. It’s as if he’s always there.“ 

Luke leaned forwards to look into her eyes. “You were strong enough to resist him before, and you’re even stronger now.”

“I wish I had your confidence. I don’t know if I’ll ever be free of him. I can feel him, like a ghost, at the edges of everything, just out of sight, wearing me down until one day I fall.” 

She turned her attention back to the vista and shook her head, “Or, that’s all bullshit, and there’s only me, and he’s just an excuse: ‘Oh, it wasn’t my fault I went to the Dark Side, Palpatine made me do it.’” Her voice dropped to a whisper, “Nobody would be surprised.”

“Rey, you’re talking as if it's your destiny to fail. Don’t fall into that trap,” he urged her, “Your story hasn’t been written yet. You still have choices.”

“Then why are they so hard to see?”

“Because you’re so concerned with your path that you only see what lies straight ahead. You just need to turn your head, Rey. Let the Force guide you.”

“He tried to turn you to the Dark,” she asked, “How did you resist?”

But Luke was gone, the chair empty, leaving her only with a familiar, aching longing for more time and a nagging fear that she had missed something, a moment of enlightenment that had passed her by, a message lost in the exchange. Her mind was dragged back again to their final meeting on Ahch-to, its violence and antagonism and how she’d never expressed her regrets on how they had parted. Maybe next time. 

_He never understood you_ , whispered something old and bitter and hidden. 

She hugged her knees, let the sofa and robes swallow her and clutched the bowl, warming her hands. Her gaze flickered to the doorways and corners of the cabin as if searching for something half-expected, but all was still and silent save the chirping of desert birds as they danced in the dawn light and the distant hum of the drives moving her towards her fate. 

  
  


\-----

  
  


Was he really still on Cantonica? Or had that transport sprouted a hyperdrive and whisked him off-world while he was dozing? Finn walked the cracked and pitted pathway, the cool evening air a welcome change from the heat of the day. Canto Bight’s opulence and excess contrasted starkly with the eclectic, functional chaos of the surrounding service towns like the one he now found himself in. He’d been ejected from the sleek, cosseted world of the resorts to witness the hidden side of Cantonica, the part that the patrons of its casinos and yachts couldn’t live without but paid good money to have removed as far away as possible. 

Truth be told though, he felt more at home here. He quickened his pace as he moved along a street lined with a bewildering jumble of stores and stalls selling street food, work-wear and various types of tools and light equipment. Somewhere on the left up ahead there should be a route to his objective; the largest concentration of bars in town. The plan was he’d ask around for tips on how to find passage to the Hydian Way, probably via Ruuria, and ideally all the way to the Core. It had to be cheap passage though; he wasn’t sure how his funds would hold up when he reached the Core worlds. The Council still owed him and who knew when they would pay? 

His phone buzzed: “Incoming: FLYBOY”. Finn grinned and approved the call.

“Yo.” Finn held the phone in front of him as he continued walking.

“Mr Eighty Seven!” The image of Poe shimmered before him. He was somewhere dark, sitting on what seemed to be a bed, wearing a t-shirt and shorts, and Finn could hear whispers off-holo.

“How’s it going Dammerman?”

“Good, good. But how are you doing? Where are you?”

“Cantonica, looking for a ship to Ruuria.”

“So you can get on the Hydian, right. Look, when you’re at the ports, tell them Poe sent you.”

“So you know people here?” This could save him; getting a berth for the kind of price he needed wasn’t going to be easy.

“Nope,” The Best Pilot In The Galaxy declared, and lowered his voice, “But everyone knows Poe Dameron.”

“Right, ok.” Finn sighed.

“Listen,” Poe said, “I’ve been thinking about what you said about needing to go your own path, make your own way and all that. And I wanted to tell you I respect that, I really do.”

“Thanks man, that means a lot.”

“It's important for your personal development and emotional well-being to make this step. I see that now,” Poe said earnestly, “Be the best version of you, man. I’m sorry if I didn’t sound fully on board with that before,” he glanced off-holo and gave someone a thumbs-up.

“Ok. That’s really great to hear, dude. I need all the, you know, emotional support I can get right now.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course. So I’ve got a proposition for you.”

“Oh.”

“One last big night out. Finnster and the Flyboy.”

“Umm.”

“We hit Canto Bight. Hard,” Poe grinned.

“Canto Bight? Well…”

“And I bring company.” More giggles, off-holo.

“Company?”

“What, you thought you were getting me all to yourself? That ship has sailed man. You want a piece of Poe, you gotta be fast,” he leaned in and whispered, “Though I’m not saying never, you know?”

A figure moved in from the right, slinking across the bed. A Twi’lek girl, her lithe blue form dressed only in what appeared to be scraps of underwear, body and lekku entwined in fine golden chains: this year’s fashion. She put an arm around Poe and gave him a peck on the forehead. A human girl moved into view, wearing nothing but underwear that seemed to be constructed mainly of dark matter, and knelt behind him to massage his shoulders.

“Meet my top students. We got Erin and Hera here, and A’ren and A’ran over there,” he winked at someone behind the camera, eliciting more giggles, “All A+ material.”

“Students?” Finn asked, “Poe, really? Is this wise?”

“Sure. I like to make my classes competitive. The fight for top grades is fierce and these girls are killing it.”

“I don’t want to see you in any trouble, dude.”

“Finn, my man, how many times do I have to tell you? Poe Dameron…”

“... makes his own rules, yeah, ok, got it.”

“So I got it all worked out,” Poe explained, “I take them on a training flight to Bonadan. Erin’s X-wing gets some technical difficulties - it's a recurring problem - we take a few days for ‘repairs’ during which we skip over to Cantonica for the weekend. These girls can keep secrets, believe me. Nobody’s any the wiser. Flight plan is already in the books. Boom. Say ‘Yes, you’re the man, Poe’.”

“Poe, the timing isn’t-”

“Say ‘You’re the man, Poe’,” Poe insisted.

“Ok, ok. You’re the man, Poe. But look, it’s like... I dunno,” he sounded lame, he knew, but he really wasn’t in the mood, “I think I’m just going to stick to the plan, get passage to Ruuria, take the Hydian to Iloh and take it from there.”

“Seriously? Listen to yourself.” Poe wagged a finger at him, “Wait. I know what’s going on here.”

“Really.”

“Don’t try to hide it.”

“Ok.”

“You’re lovesick. You’re hurting.”

Finn exhaled and looked to the stars. Sometimes Poe was right on the money. 

“You’re wondering why you walked away.”

“Yeah, ok. I am, but I know I had to.” 

“What should be good memories just fill you with pain.”

“Right. They do. It sucks. ” He should have called Poe earlier. It was good to have someone who understood when you were in a new town full of strangers.

“Your heart is haunted by a parting that never should have been.”

“You’re right, man,” Finn admitted, “You’re so right.”

“Dude, I understand. I forgive you. I’m all yours…”

“No, Poe, look…”

“I’ll lose the girls. It’ll be just you and me, like old times.”

“You’re getting the wrong idea…”

“Am I,” he raised an eyebrow, “Really?”

Think, Finn, think. “I’ve made promises. Oaths. They can’t be broken.”

“Oaths? What kind of oaths?”

“I was going to wait before telling you, but,” he took a breath, “I’ve taken the Jedi vows, so I gotta follow the code. That means no attachments, no matter how strong my feelings.” He held his free hand over his chest, struggling to contain the yearning heart within, “I have to deny myself.”

Poe frowned. “Didn’t you try to be a Jedi already?”

“Eh, kinda. It was too soon for me. My spirit is ready now. I got a great teacher lined up on Iloh.”

“Well. Ok...” Poe’s face fell and he looked away.

“Sorry, man,” he hated to lie to Poe, but what else could he do? This saved his feelings.

“Yeah, yeah,” Poe stroked his stubbled chin in thought, “But the flight plan’s already booked. So, uh,” he grinned at something off-holo and his face brightened, “Guess I’ll be having that weekend in Canto anyways.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“You’re missing out, man.”

“I know, I know, but I have to, like, rid myself of emotion and physical pleasures and all of that crap.” He tried to summon as much gravity into his voice as he could muster. “I have to strengthen my soul and fine-tune my connection with the Force.”

“Rather you than me.”

“Such is the path of a true Jedi on his quest for enlightenment and oneness with the Force,” Finn declared, “But keep me posted, you never know.”

“Same. Let me know if you’re in any trouble. I got a whole squadron of trainee pilots here just itching to blast shit out of space.”

“Poe, you can’t… never mind. I’ll catch ya around.”

“Flyboy signing off,” Poe saluted the camera as the holo disconnected. 

Finn stopped at the turning. The bars should be just a few minutes away, so he needed to focus, stay on-mission and find that passage to the Hydian. He strode off down the busy walkway towards his objective, purpose in his steps.

  
  


\-----

  
  


Were the sounds of the desert night being played everywhere in the ship, or were they just following her around, room to room? It was hard to tell. Rey wandered into the sleeping cabin, attention drawn to irregular bursts of shuffling and chirping from insects and small animals, and the occasional howl of something larger and distant. Without the visuals it felt as if the ship had picked up a rodent infestation during its stay on Cantonica.

“Ship, turn the vista audio off.”

Silence. For a moment, before it was filled by ambient tinkles and chimes that suggested a tuneful rainfall engineered to lull humans into bed and off to sleep. No engineering required though - it turned out that hot spiced drink went down even better with the addition of some Chadian rum. She put the bowl down on a table and sat on the bed. 

A tired, disheveled girl in huge bath robes, strands of dark hair tumbling across her face, frowned at her out of the full length mirror. Stripped of sabers and robes and the attention of stylists, she looked like a girl, any girl, nothing special. When normal people looked at her, what did they see? A fearsome avenger? The Most Awesome Being in the galaxy, a death dealing warrior, a Jedi, a savior, a Skywalker? How did that work? Could she be all of those things to all of those people? Haunted eyes stared back. They didn’t know either. 

A memory flashed into her mind, of the Falcon after she’d escaped from Jakku, of discovering its (surprisingly large, at the time, but not so surprising once she’d met the original owner) walk-in wardrobe and observing herself in its full length mirror. Mirrors of any size hadn’t been part of the scavenger’s life she was racing away from, and she’d stood there for minutes, drinking deep from the experience, turning, posing, watching the light catch her face, her figure, lost in seeing herself for the first time. She looked older now, but not as old as she felt.

Snap out of it. The mission. Sleep now, then up, breakfast, hit the compact but very functional gym unit for an hour, meditation, practice some combat drills. After that, she should be nearing Ziost. 

She stood and let the robe slip to the floor, luxuriating in the sensation of chill air raising goose pimples over every inch of her skin.

Then a moment of alarm, triggered by the touch of fingers running through her hair before she recognized the familiar presence behind her. 

“Hello,” Ben’s voice a soft rumble in her ear.

She stretched to the ceiling, her skin tingling as he ran his hands over her, and sighed as she felt the feather touch of his kiss on her neck. Ben’s ghost seemed more insubstantial than the others, for reasons she suspected were related to his interrupted training in the Light Side. He’d never elaborated. 

“I’m still mad at you,” she said.

“If you’d told Finn how it worked, he might not have done it. It was good wasn’t it.”

“Yes,” she admitted, “But confusing. I don’t know if I want to do it again.”

“Why not? We’re joined, we should share these experiences. It maintains our connection.”

“Maybe. But still, I’m not sure I want to.”

“It brings us closer,” he insisted, ”We’re a Dyad. That’s no small thing.”

“I know, I know,” she decided to push it further tonight, “But do we have to be?”

“What do you mean?” Ben almost laughed, “The Force decides. There’s no escaping it.” 

“The Force sucks sometimes. It plays with us,” she folded her arms against the chill.

“Rey,” she could sense his irritation, “You’re not making sense. We have a destiny together. We are bound across space and time. We shouldn’t deny it.”

“So it’s just destiny, and that’s the end of it? I feel like I’m drowning in destiny. Don’t I get a say?”

“Why? You want out of this?” She couldn’t feel his touch now.

“That’s not what I meant,” 

“Then what did you mean?” he snapped. 

“Sometimes,” she started, carefully, “I feel like I’m trapped. Stuck in these boxes I can’t break out of. Why do we have to be a Dyad? Why can’t we just be us?”

“I’m not even sure what you’re saying,” Ben dismissed her, his anger obvious now, “I don’t even know if it’s possible. Why are you asking me these things? Are you trying to provoke me?” 

Her life felt like a starship, racing away from a dying star, away from the brilliance of those glorious, perfect moments they’d shared that had once burned so bright they had cast their light across the galaxy. And she was a passenger, pressed up against the glass, eyes wide, able only to watch them recede and grow dimmer, grow ever more distant no matter how hard she reached back, straining to touch them one last time. There had been a harmony in their passion, sweet and hot as a sun, but death and time had left it a cold, dark place hanging in the void, and her orbiting it, caught in its gravity, the time when it had given her warmth and life long gone, but still terrified of leaving, to break free and brave what lay beyond. 

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything,” she murmured and brushed the hair from her face. She’d pushed too far. It was the alcohol, “Don’t worry about it, please. It’s just me. It’s just a phase. I’ll get out of it.” 

She turned to him and looked up into eyes that searched her face with a sullen intensity. How angry was he? Let’s try a change in direction and play for sympathy. She took his hands and clasped them in front of her. They felt like wisps, shells that tingled against her palms and brushed her fingertips like a breath. 

“I’m worried about my balance,” she started, “I think I’m slipping into the Dark, bit by bit. But it's hard to tell how much is just bad days or bad weeks, and how much is the Dark Side creeping up on me. It's hard to know if I’m walking an edge.” 

“Even the greatest Jedi have bad days,” he replied, calmer but his eyes still burning, “I think the difference is whether there’s that seed of darkness in the core of your soul, growing until it dominates you. It's either there, or it's not. It was always in me, waiting.”

“I feel it’s in me, growing, and I never had a chance. My bloodline, my parents; they only ever wanted to protect me, but they sowed the seeds all the same. There’s too much history sending me to the Dark Side.”

“Don’t think like that. Don’t give in. Once you’re there, it’s so hard to get back.”

“How did you do it?” 

“I had help, a lot of help. My grandfather had help. Nobody can do it alone,” he insisted, “Alone, you just fall deeper in.”

“Help me then,” she breathed.

“I wish I could,” guilt forced him to look away, “I don’t think I can. It's not just breaking free, it's staying that way. It never truly leaves you. You have to fight it every day. I can’t be there.”

She closed her eyes and held his hands tighter, pulling them to her and making a wish.

“Stay with me a little longer,” she asked, knowing that nothing good would come of it, but needing him all the same, even if it was just to delay the pain of finding herself alone once more.

But when she opened her eyes, he was gone. 

She searched for a brief moment before accepting that the visitation was at an end and hugged herself, shivering slightly in the chill, empty room, in the empty ship, billions of miles from the nearest living soul. 

Ghosts. They came and went. They couldn’t be relied on. She didn’t need them.

“I don’t need them,” she said to the room, “Fuck them. Fuck them all.”

They tormented her with the promise of wisdom from realms beyond the physical, but instead only confided vague half-truths wrapped in evasion and disappointment.

So she was alone again. So what? She knew all about alone. She was just fine alone. 

“I’m fine. I’m fine,” she repeated. 

Rey turned to the mirror again. Without the robes, she looked stronger, a warrior left scarred and hardened though years of combat against forces of darkness. Evil forces that ordinary people, wrapped up in their safe, ordinary lives, couldn’t comprehend and she had faced down time and again, alone. She’d done this to save them, to save everyone, because nobody else could, only the union of Palpatine and Skywalker, Dark and Light.

“Nobody else can do this,” she said to the warrior and was met with a defiant, unflinching gaze that fixed her from eyes that knew the Dark and how to crush it, how to destroy it to bring Light to the galaxy. 

_He never loved you_ , whispered something old and full of malice from shadowy corners of the haunted ship that carried the lost girl away from her dark, dead star.

  
  


\-----

  
  


Finn threw his cards down in disgust. “Again! Not my night.” He shook his head and looked to the heavens, only to find his view blocked by the low ceiling of the dimly lit cantina.

“Thought you said Lando Calrissian himself taught you,” chuckled the elderly Zabrak to Finn’s left as he collected the winnings. 

Smirks and smiles passed around the rest of the Sabacc table, a good natured collection of players, mainly human, some passing through, some working here to support the resorts. Finn had been able to find a casual, low-stakes game without much trouble in the maze of bars and eating places in the busy town. Finding a berth to the Core for under six thousand credits was proving much harder, but Adra, the human woman opposite him, was the owner of a freighter bound for Exodeen; perfect, but her asking price of ten thousand was too rich, and she wasn’t budging. Still, he had some ideas about how to reduce that price. 

“Lando Calrissian? No way,” Adra’s brow furrowed in skepticism. She’d been late to the table and missed that.

“He sure did,” Finn assured her and took a sip from his glass of Nikta. 

“When I was a teenager, I had a crush on him you wouldn’t believe,” she said in awe, “How did you know him?”

“I was with the Resistance, after Starkiller. Right at the center of it, in fact. Knew 'em all.” He left it there, reluctant to get into the stories tonight. “He was quite a guy. Everything you ever heard, it’s probably true.”

“Heard he was one for the ladies,” said the Zabrak.

“And some of it is doubly true,” Finn confirmed.

“You ever meet Skywalker?” asked another of the players, a younger, male human who worked security in the casinos during the week, and the Sabacc and Carom tables at the weekend.

“Luke? Never did.”

“Nah, Rey.”

“Yeah,” Finn said reluctantly, “Yeah, I guess we were friends,” he said distractedly, shuffling his chips, hoping the game would move along, knowing from experience that this was unlikely; he should have lied. 

“Wow,” the young guy’s eyes widened.

“I heard she saved a whole school of orphans on Borao from a Vong militia,” said the Zabrak.

“Yeah, right.” Finn scoffed.

“I saw a vid where these Sith were terrorizing some cute puppies, and she kicked their ass,” remarked a Togrutan girl to Finn’s right.

“Force sake. Seriously?”

“I read that these Zann gangsters were feeding a Princess to a Sarlacc, and she showed up, saved the Princess, and made all the Zann swear allegiance to the Council,” said Adra.

“Does anybody actually believe this crap?”

“And then she took them all to a casino where she used the Force and cheated them out of their money.”

“That’s more like it,” Finn confirmed. 

“But she got drunk and wrecked the place.”

“It’s been known to happen.”

“Then she fucked the boss Zann...”

“I bet that’s an experience to remember,” Finn muttered bitterly with a distant look in his eyes.

“... and the Princess.”

“I really don’t need to hear this.” 

“And the guy that posted all this up, she threw him into the Sarlacc.”

“Yup, that’s her,” Finn declared confidently, “Your story checks out.”

“She sounds fucking crazy,” the Zabrak said.

“I heard she was awesome,” said the Togrutan girl.

“She’s both,” Finn said, “She’s a bit crazy, but the amount of shit she’s been through, I guess she’s got a right to be. And yeah, she is awesome; that’s how she gets away with the crazy shit.” He took a sip of the Nikta.

“She’s a royal pain sometimes,” he said and considered this further. “I think she believes she actually is royalty.”

He took a larger slug of the Nikta and continued, “She’s never on damn time because she never uses clocks - insists she can tell the time from the sun. How stupid is that? She’s not on Jakku anymore!”

“I’m always having to fix stuff for her because she never reads the manual - insists she has an instinctive understanding of machines.”

“She uses the Force to turn the pages of a book, or even scratch her back, which is just so insulting to the rest of us struggling to master it,” he said, exasperated.

He took another drink. They shouldn’t have got him started. 

“She only understands Droid when it suits her - I’ll never know what BB says about me.” He pictured her shrugging innocently while BB rocked erratically, beeping and whistling in what sounded very much like mocking laughter.

“That saber is yellow, not gold,” this one really wound him up, “Calling it a ‘super luxury goldsaber’ does not make it better than everyone else’s. It’s just fucking yellow.” 

“And being the granddaughter of the most evil man in the galaxy does not entitle you to discounts in random places,” he said, then remembered some more, “And even asking is dangerous. For me anyway.”

“She lives to wind up Poe, but she loves him,” he sighed, “Though she’d never let him know.”

He looked into his glass and swirled the last couple of mouthfuls. “She has absolutely no idea how to do hair and make up and all that, but she’s beautiful all the same, every day.”

He downed the remains of the glass, slammed it on the table and grimaced, “She drives me fucking nuts.”

Finn looked up from the glass. The table was silent. All eyes were on him, faces stony.

“What?” he asked.

“Finished?” Aran tutted and rolled her eyes, “Your deal.”

“Ok, ok,” Finn sighed and collected up the cards. Now was the time; he’d done enough losing. Hopefully she’d be confident enough to take the bait. “My luck has to change sometime,” he said to Adra with a shrug. Then an idea came to him, “How about a wager. Just you and me?”

“Go on,” the woman eyed him warily.

”If I win the next two hands, I get that berth to Exodeen for nothing. Otherwise, I pay you five thousand right now.”

She considered this a moment and looked around at the other five sat around the table. They were decent players, and Finn had barely won a hand all night. Worst case, she had one extra mouth to feed on the trip. “Ok, rebel boy. I’ll take that bet. Let’s see if your luck turns.”

Finn managed to keep a straight face but grinned inwardly as he shuffled. Luck would have nothing to do with it. Time to show them what Lando had really taught him. The berth was as good as his.

  
  


\-----

  
  


Far away from smoky cantinas and sabacc games and billions upon billions of miles from anyone she had once loved or called a friend, the girl with the fire in her eyes and the Dark in her soul shivered in cool, silken sheets and pulled the covers tighter, making a silent wish for the ghosts to leave her alone, just for the night. She slipped into fitful sleep and started to dream...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Firstly, thanks for reading! Really, it’s great to see people in the end notes. I’ll have another mince pie to celebrate.
> 
> Secondly, arrrrgggg! %-/ This chapter was so much harder to write and way longer than I expected! I’ve had to split it in two. I thought it would be an easy, short one: Rey mopes about in the shuttle, Finn larks about finding a ship, just get them in place for the big finale. Easy peasy. But nope. Anyway, it’s pretty much all figured out now, so hopefully the second half of this shouldn’t take too long. Hopefully…


	6. Ghosts - 2

  
  


She was wearing her old scavenger’s rags, standing in the main cabin, watching the panel and its list of names of worlds scroll by. 

…

Malastare

…

Darkknell

…

She needed to choose one fast, before it appeared. It was coming. The place she had never escaped.

…

Eriadu

…

Triton

…

Choose one. Now. Just say the word. 

…

Shumavar

…

Atrivis

…

Now! Say one, any one!

She tried, but no sound came from her lips. 

…

Bespin

…

Rutan

…

She was frozen to the spot, unable to speak, unable to run.

The list stopped scrolling. It had reached the end.

  
  
  


Exegol

  
  
  
  


The word flashed, selected though she had never spoken its name and the walls of the craft displayed the vista. The sight surrounded her, wrapping her in a terror that she had never truly left behind. The Sith Citadel towered into the gloom above, a crushing presence filling the sky with dark, pitted stone abused into shape by unnatural powers, hung in space by forces commanded only by those that had devoted their lives to the blackest parts of the soul. It waited, poised to crush her like an ant if she was foolish enough to continue on the path ahead and venture under its vast black boot. 

It had taken all of her courage that day to keep moving, walking forward into that unnatural space. She’d felt so vulnerable, so alone again. Was it easier or harder now, knowing what lay beyond? The halls in their hideous decaying grandeur. Him.

To her right, a cackle. She turned away from the screens to look. The corridor was shrouded in shadows too dark to see into, but she knew what lurked there. She had hoped against reason that he was gone forever after that day, but she was stupid. Death hadn’t stopped him before, and it never would. He had never stopped searching for her and now he had found her, the last of his bloodline.

Something awful dragged itself closer and somehow, from somewhere, she found the strength to tear her feet away from the floor, and run. 

She ran through the corridors of the shuttle, its panels of luxurious wood rotting, its inlays and decorations of polished precious metal corroded. The lights flickering and broken, abandoning it to half darkness. She could hear the terrible mocking laughter behind her, following, closer now despite her desperate flight. Don’t look around.

She ran aimlessly without knowing where or how she could escape, for there could be no safety when evil was allowed by good people to survive, nurse its wounds and grow strong again. The corridors she hurtled through grew darker and dirtier, the floor of polished stone broken and uneven, and though she fled faster and faster, he grew closer, the sound of his rasping breath louder. Don’t look back.

And then, barely visible in the pitch darkness at the end of a broken, smashed corridor, an open door and sanctuary. With one final desperate effort, she ran. She sprinted heedless through decorations twisted into slicing, jutting blades, her bare feet flew over tiles turned into shattered shards, her head brushed hanging, sparking wires. His mocking laughter filled the ship, his stinking breath hot on her neck as she reached the doorway and fell through into the void. 

She was standing on the main deck of the Falcon, the ship silent around her, and He was gone, far away. Everything was right and safe and good, because it was just the two of them together, her and Finn, and he would never let anyone harm her. She was filled with an impossible, beautiful peace. But where was he? She turned away from the dejarik table to walk down the port corridor, left at the airlock, right at the refresher to peek into the larger bunk room. Silence, but she was sure she wasn’t alone and he was on the ship somewhere; she could feel it. She stepped into the quarters and into the walk-in wardrobe, sight filled by capes of various colors and textures.

She brushed the capes aside to reveal a full length mirror. The girl in the mirror was a vision. Dressed entirely in white and bright shades of cream and gold, she was a creature of the light. She was powerful, her gaze calm and strong, unafraid of the challenges she knew were ahead, undaunted by the battles with darkness she would win to free the galaxy. She would vanquish evil, destroy it, erase it forever. 

She turned, and there he was, facing away from her. He wore Poe’s jacket, of course, because she knew without seeing that they were leaving Jakku. She loved him in that jacket, though she’d never said, of course. So much left unsaid, words frozen by fear, left stuck in her throat to be chewed over endlessly, fitfully until morning. 

She reached out and touched his back, but he shrank away. 

Both hands gripped his shoulders to try and turn him, but it was impossible. 

Her heart caught in her chest and a choking panic rose in her throat. She needed his approval; without that how could she know it was right? Sometimes things got mixed up and complicated and it was difficult to see what was right, but Finn always knew. She needed him to understand and see what she was and what she would do and say yes. Yes to destroying all of the followers of the Dark, yes to saving the galaxy once again, yes to everything even though she’d hurt him, yes he understood why she had to push him away, yes he forgave her. That most of all.

She beat on his back and screamed in silence, tears wetting her cheeks, but he was unmoved and would not look at her, his head bent, body slumped in disappointment at what he had seen. She roared but no sound passed her lips. She tore at the jacket, only for him to shake his head sadly and speak at last.

“No.”

  
  


\---

  
  


Rey woke, tears cooling on her skin, heart thumping, the feel of the jacket on her fingers and threads of the dream still clinging to her, filling her with sadness. And though the image of Finn turned away and disapproving was freshest and most painful, her mind turned to the girl in the mirror, the girl of light and how she had felt to see herself so. Powerful and full of certainty. Right.

  
  


\-----

  
  


Everything he needed in two kit bags and a small rucksack, Finn observed with some satisfaction as he exited the refresher, walked to the balcony of his hotel room and began the stretching exercises that preceded his standard morning workout. Finding comfort in these routines when life post-Crait had become a series of unpredictable, untidy uprootings, had helped him keep body and mind level when others were becoming bent out of shape. That discipline was one of the very few ways in which he was thankful for his Stormtrooper past, he reflected as he looked out across the dusty, bustling satellite city and the desert expanse beyond.

Things were moving now. Adra would take him as far as Corellia, and from there it wouldn’t be hard to get to Iloh. And most importantly, he would still have all his savings; he could thank Lando for that one.

Behind him in the room, his phone rang. Reluctant to interrupt his exercises, Finn broke from them to walk back inside to check it. 

INCOMING: BOOTICOLL

Rose again. Great. She’d tried to get through to him two or three, maybe more, times in the past day, and he’d not been in the mood, but ok, let’s get this done. He approved the call. 

“Hey,” he said.

“Finn! You’re alive!” Rose gasped, eyes wide. The holo showed her sitting on a large, golden chair, elaborately decorated. Was that a glitch in the video or a column of orange flame flickering behind her? 

“Yeah, sure.” 

“OhmygodsIthoughtyouweredead,” the words burst free as she struggled to draw breath. 

What had he told her last time? Knights. Casino. “Yeah, those Knights, they weren’t so tough. Took ‘em out pretty easy. Still time for a game of Tregald.”

“Oh Finn, oh thank the Force,” she held her hands over her heart, “I’ve been trying to reach you. I’ve been going crazy here.”

“Rose, I appreciate the concern, but I can handle myself,” he assured her.

“I’m so sorry, I never intended this to happen.”

Finn’s stomach took a familiar lurch.

“I thought I was on mute,” she explained urgently, “and these religious types, they take everything so fucking literally.”

“Rose, calm down and tell me what’s going on.” 

“Has anyone tried to kill you recently? Since our last call?”

“Uhhh…”

“Nobody shouting ‘Death to the deceiver’? Nothing like that?”

Finn dashed to the balcony and scanned the street below, which revealed only the scrabble of city life and nobody shouting or looking especially life-threatening. He stepped back into the room. 

“Rose, what have you done?”

“If I was to say that I wanted Finn castrated and fed to Lyran Bloodslugs, you’d know what I meant, right?”

“I’d know it was a cry for more quality time with me, sure.”

“Exactly!” she exploded in vindication and relief, “You know me. You get me. But these guys don’t.”

“Ok, so I’m going to take a wild guess,” Finn pinched the bridge of his nose in an attempt to relieve the pressure building up to a Rose-related headache, “You told your fanatically devoted followers that hang on your every word, that you wanted me castrated and fed to bloodslugs.”

“Well,” she winced and wriggled, “Yeah, something like that, but it wasn’t my fault. These guys treat everything I say as a holy command or something. I’ll never get used to it. I’ll be sat on the Throne of Fiery Resurrection...” 

Ok, so it really was flames, not a video glitch. Classy.

“...and a bunch of disciples roll up an entire roast Fathier because I said something about being hungry enough to eat one.”

“But look,” she took a second to straighten and compose herself, smoothing her hair, “Probably nothing will come of it,” she assured him confidently as she casually waved away the threat of imminent genital removal, “I’m just saying you should keep an eye out.”

“Right. Thanks.” Finn sighed.

“For the rest of your life.”

Finn looked to the heavens and exhaled. “Ok. So that’s it? You just called to warn me?” 

“Well, there was something else, now we’ve got the chit-chat out of the way,” she looked away and hunched her shoulders in discomfort.

The room started to spin and Finn sat down on the bed, quite hard.

“I really wanted to say I’m sorry I got so riled up last time. It was just the surprise of finding out you were with her. I’ve got a bit of a thing about Rey.”

“I know. Everyone does.”

“She’s got everything, you know? Looks, talent, this amazing privileged life. Adored and admired by billions.”

Her eyes met his, held them and didn’t let go. The frantic energy was all gone now, leaving a calm and the Rose he remembered before her life had lurched sideways into sainthood. The Rose that wanted to tear it all down, make something better and made him believe she could. The Rose that had been prepared to die to save what she loved. 

“And you. She has you,” she said. 

Finn frowned, “I don’t...”

Rose snorted and held up a hand to silence him, “So I want to hate her. That’s shit, I know. I try to convince myself that she’s this terrible person, so I can hate away as much as I want. But really she’s not, she’s just not the perfect hero everyone says she is. And we’re supposed to be grateful to her for saving the galaxy as well? No thanks,” she continued reluctantly and shrugged, “I actually had a big crush on her, which makes me hate myself a bit and her even more.”

“Yeah,” Finn said, and looked out at the desert beyond, and remembered lying in the dust, a girl in worn, dirty clothes, sand in her hair and anger in her eyes standing over him. “Yeah, I know what you mean. She can be hard to love.”

“Right,” Rose smiled sadly, “So anyway, if you’re hanging out with her, ok. But come back and see me someday. Don’t be a stranger.”

“Rose, I will,” he said and meant it, “And you take it easy. Particularly on the proclamations of death and destruction and all that.”

“I’ll try,” she laughed, “But the power is kind of intoxicating, you know? Do you think it’s possible to turn to the Dark Side even if you’re not Force sensitive?”

“Definitely,” Finn grinned, ”Take care Rose.”

“You’re still my hero,” she said quickly, before he could break the call, “Always will be.”

He shook his head, “I’m nobody’s hero.”

She gave him a pitying, lopsided smile and gentle shake of the head, “All these years, and you still don’t get it, do you?”

“See ya Finnster,” she said, saluting him.

“Finnster? Have you been talking to…” But the call was closed. 

Not a bad call. A pretty good one, in fact. Yes, there had been the revelation that religious fanatics wanted to feed him to parasites that would burrow into his skin and gorge on his blood, suspending him in an unspeakable agony that would render him insane before he died a long drawn-out death from blood loss. But all in all, a good call. Finn released a satisfied sigh before returning to the balcony to resume his stretching routine, the street below full of bustle and life. 

The day was looking up. 

  
  


\-----

  
  


Trees whipped by, flickers of sunlight dancing through the canopy above. Up a short hill, across a log spanning a canyon so improbably steep and bottomless that it almost spoiled the illusion, zig zagging a rough path through lush foliage. 

The forest in this simulation was close enough to Ajan Kloss that her exertions blotted out the present and Rey found herself lost in it, taken back to when everything and everyone she cared for was clinging to existence by its fingernails, fighting an evil that threatened to overwhelm them at any moment. A simpler time. 

And Leia, waiting at the end of the training run, a wry smile, endless patience and some well chosen words of wisdom. Anything to see that smile; oh how she’d lived to please back then.

Pain in that image, a punch to the gut that caused her face to contort in a grimace as she flung out a Force push at a (simulated) tree dead ahead, causing the vista to glitch and buckle. It stayed glitched; reckless in her hurt, she’d hit it pretty hard. Whatever, it could be replaced. Using a Force push on the run was training, and that workout was nearing the end anyway.

She eyed the vital signs and workout data in the top left of her sightline. Pretty good, taking into account a hangover and a few days of inactivity in Cantonica. 

Rey walked out of the sim room to be met by a small serving droid bearing the glass of chav-spiced rum she’d ordered earlier. Just one to chase away the cobwebs and start the day, and some vine-coffee next to balance it out. She plucked the glass from its flat top, took a sip and eyeblink-fast, whipped out and ignited the saber, stopping the blade fractions from the surface of the droid in a Force-assisted blur of motion. She felt sharp again, a weapon honed and ready to be wielded against the malign forces that threatened them all. The droid stayed where it was, unable to recognise the saber as a danger, and Rey pressed the blade a little further, cutting into the metal. It’s just a droid.

“Incoming call: Office of the Defence of the Realm of the New Council,” the ship announced.

“Accept the call,” Rey replied, extinguishing and sheathing the saber as the droid scuttled back to the serving units. She straightened up, adjusted her hair and hoped she wasn’t obviously breathing hard. 

“Greetings, Defender Rey Skywalker,” boomed the voice of the Office of Defence. The holo before her was always human, male with a kindly expression, nondescript greying hair and a well-spoken Coruscant accent. Lately she’d come to suspect the image and voice were synthesized and there was no telling who or what she was talking to. 

“We are most pleased,” he continued, “with your progress in retrieving the Tantalus artifact. Did you leave any surviving Knights or their followers on Toola?”

“No. I got them all,” Rey replied. 

“You did well, Rey,” he assured her, ”They were too dangerous to be kept alive.”

A flash of a girl and a boy lying together in mud and pools of blood.

“Thank you. I’m on-route to Ziost now, as you instructed.”

“Excellent. The remainder of Tantalus will be found on Ziost, a planet of significance to the Sith and therefore the Knights.”

“Ok, good...” she hesitated, unsure of whether to give voice to this question again.

“You wish to speak, our Defender of the Light?” 

“Yes,” she probably shouldn’t, but they shared so little, and the uncertainty was starting to trouble her, “Once Tantalus is completed and I’ve brought it to you, what then? Do you have plans for what comes next?”

“Of course,” his voice soothed and brow furrowed in concern, “We hope you trust us, Rey. Ever since we’ve known you, we sense that you search for a life greater than that of an ordinary Jedi. One of significance, of conscience. It is of the utmost importance to us to help you fulfil this promise.”

More than a Jedi. They increasingly described her in terms like this, and though she was uncertain of the meaning, it was flattering that they saw such potential. “I hope I can live up to your expectations. For now, I want to see the mission through to the end and do everything I can to eliminate the agents of Darkness.”

“Naturally. It is the only mission worthy of your greatness,” it said enthusiastically before continuing with a pained, sympathetic tone, “Rey, we understand that what we ask of you is difficult, but know this: if you do as we bid you, it shall bring nearer The New Glory, an era of dominance of the Light that has been prophesied will bring order and peace to the galaxy for millennia. Surely that is worth risk and sacrifice?”

“Yes, of course. I just wonder, sometimes,” she looked down and shifted her stance uncomfortably, “Why I have to do this alone, or almost alone?”

“You are uniquely capable of fulfilling the mission. There is nobody else with your abilities, your power and alignment with the Force,” the voice reminded her gently.

“I understand, I do. But sometimes, I feel as if it’s too much to do alone. I feel like I’m getting unbalanced, in how the Light and Dark sides exist in me. It scares me.”

“Fear not, Rey. This is your gift. You alone are capable of embracing a larger view of the Force as you strive to achieve victory,” the kindly face explained patiently, “The anger that burns within you gives you focus, makes you stronger, and the galaxy needs that strength.”

“Yes, I know. There are still many followers of the Dark at large.”

“Indeed. If permitted, they will rebuild and gain strength, as before. Believe that we understand your struggles and your importance to the New Council is second to none. You will be instrumental in bringing about peace and prosperity for our entire civilization.”

She remembered the blur that her life became after the fall of the Final Order at Exegol. 

The naked, feverish adulation wrapped up in a billion smiles and wide-eyed compliments, adoring interviews, gifts from absurdly grateful strangers, a million breathless, tearful proclamations of love and veneration. She had been worshipped, lifted up on the shoulders of the galaxy, so high, so close to the sun that every hour of every day was spent dazzled, never wanting to touch the ground again. The five year old girl standing on a dune in tears and confusion had never been so quiet and distant. To achieve this a second time, there could be nothing better, nothing more she could ask of life. 

“I’m doing my best, I really am,” Rey said, “But the Darksiders are strong, and I get tired sometimes,” she hugged herself, sweat chilling her skin in the cool, dry air, “I’ll defeat them though, I know I can.”

“Indeed; they are strong, but you are stronger,” he nodded, “Use your strength, your unique abilities and through our guidance you will achieve a power greater than any Jedi. You are a warrior of the Light, and, we believe, the vanguard of a new age of the Force.”

They had talked at length about her uniqueness before, about how her Palpatine heritage and training in the Light side presented opportunities that other Force adepts could never attain, “More and more, I believe you’re right,” she agreed, “It worries me, the Dark Side, but there have been times, when I’ve been outnumbered, or… my assistant was at risk...”

Her heart lurched at memories of Finn hurt on Qaradoun, and how the intensity of her fear and despair had caused her to lose control, and what she’d done to his attackers. It was for the best that he’d left; her fear of finding him broken or dead had eaten away at her foundations, night and day, leaving her unbalanced, teetering on an edge. It had been a mistake to have him on the mission. The sweetest of mistakes; if only he was here... Push that away, girl, push it down, out of your mind.

“...and I’ve used it. I can feel its power, but I’ve used it for good. I’ve tried, anyway.”

“Excellent. The Dark Side of the Force is a pathway to abilities that can be useful to you. Don’t be afraid. You simply need to walk it with your eyes open and you will not fall.”

“I will. It’s just a matter of understanding and controlling it, as you say. I feel like I’m on the verge of something, of moving forward and becoming more than I am now,” she’d needed this talk; the way the Dark side was encroaching ever more into her mind and actions weighed heavily, and being so isolated made it difficult to bring herself into balance. Listening to the Council remind her of her abilities and potential was enlightening; it illuminated everything from a new angle, revealing a more positive aspect. She was grateful for the clarity.

“You are fulfilling your destiny, Rey. Have no doubts,” he smiled and tilted his head a little, a father heaping praise on a beloved daughter, “The galaxy is waiting for you to lead it into the light.” 

“I am honored, truly.”

“Go to Ziost. Retrieve the remainder of the artifact. As for the followers of the Dark Side: wipe them out, all of them.”

“I will,” she said, bowing her head. When she raised it, the holo was gone.

“Call ended,” announced the ship.

She would crush them on Ziost. Their blind devotion to the Dark Side narrowed their capabilities, just as the Jedi were limited by their refusal to incorporate any element of Darkness. This was what Luke had seen; a hidden truth, the need for Jedi and Sith to end, be burnt to the ground so that a new way might rise from their ashes, one that could span the two sides, gain strength from both and unite them. She would forge this new path, the New Glory, to bring even greater honours to the Skywalker name. She would make him proud and see his sister’s smile once more. 

\-----

Increase in the price of Coaxium and Antimatter, again. Adra better not use this to add surcharges. 

Another lost shipment of Dark Matter. Or maybe not, hard to tell.

Yet another mega holo event about the Celestials: Celestial Core Cataclysm 6. CCC1-3 had been incomprehensible garbage, 4 retconned everything in an Alternate Universe and 5 just set up spin-offs but 6 was supposed to make sense of it all by linking in four or five recent series, a couple of static volumes and three of the new interactives. Perfect. He could review and re-evaluate 1-5. Just what the long trip needed. 

A robbery at a casino…

Celebrities endorsing a project to re-introduce ex-racing Fathiers to the wild... 

New boutiques opening…

Nothing, absolutely nothing about Rey’s rampage in the local feeds, just more analysis and discussion about her winning the “Most Awesome” award yet again and whether the Rakata Artifact was really all that or just a failed attempt to wrench the honor away from her. How the fuck did she do it?

Forget it, it was decidedly unhealthy to be scanning the feeds for her anyway. Finn turned his attention back to the booth’s grimey window that gave him a view over the bustling landing bay. From here he could see Adra supervising loading of her ship, the Bakura Siren, a nondescript, squat boxy modular freighter and home for the next few weeks. Still an hour to departure, and he doubted he could nurse one mug of Chaffir for that long. Should he treat himself to a slider before weeks of who-knows-what kind of food? The beefhead looked delicious.

His phone rang: INCOMING: Corusca Resort

That couldn’t be good. He and Rey had both left in a hurry. Perhaps the resort was chasing payment for damages; when he activated the lightsaber by mistake had it scorched the flooring? Lightsabers and alcohol were a nightmare combination. Who knows what she’d sliced up when he was asleep, or - worse - what she’d had from the minibar or room service. Her tastes in alcohol were exotically expensive.

No way was he taking that call.

And then he felt it. That push, or pull, from elsewhere, somewhere beyond the crude stuff and light and noise of this existence, reaching out to touch him, direct him. A touch that was almost familiar now.

_Take the call._

Finn approved the call. 

A young woman’s voice, crisp Corellian accent, “Good Morning Mr... Two-One-Eight-Seven…” 

Fuck! Rey never got tired of that one!

“...Bountiful greetings from Corusca Resort,” the concierge sounded like she was having the Best Day Ever, “I believe you accompanied Ms Skywalker on her recent stay with us.”

“Yes… I did.” Please not the minibar.

“She left something in her room and departed Cantonica before we could reach her. We hope we can pass this on to you, so that it might be returned to her.”

“Actually, I’m afraid…”

_Take it_

“... yeah, ok, sure.”

“Excellent. We’ll drone it to your location right now.”

“Ok, I’m at…” what was this cafe called?

“Your call meta shows you in Radula, Exelon Diner, adjacent to the spaceport...”

Fuck! Again! He was sure he’d upped the privacy after Rose caught him out. Again he rued switching phones. Its marketing made 157 years of continuous development and over two million features sound like a big win, but he should have known there would be a downside. 

“...third window booth from the door. I do hope you’re enjoying your Chaffir.”

“Right, ok”, he sighed.

“The package will be delivered to you within five minutes. We hope your stay at the Corusca was one of unparalleled joy and contentment.”

“Yeah, it was great, thanks.”

“And...” the woman continued uncertainly, “Forgive me if this sounds unprofessional, but can I ask a question?”

“Ok, go for it.”

“Is she really as awesome as she seems?” she inquired breathlessly.

“Yes,” the words barely squeezed out from between Finn’s clenched teeth, “She is absolutely fucking awesome.”

“ohgodIloveher,” the concierge whispered, barely audible, then collected herself, ”Thank you Sir, for your cooperation. We look forward to welcoming you at the Corusca again.”

Finn disconnected the call and watched the comings and goings of crewmembers and port workers as he waited and wondered what she’d left behind. What if it was those petal girls? This train of thought blew through at least three pleasant but unlikely scenarios with no sign of slowing down before it was interrupted by the arrival of a drone bearing the black and violet Corusca livery, carrying a large flat box beneath it. Once it had authenticated him as Mr Two-One-Eight-Seven - he imagined Rey somewhere, somehow becoming aware of this and sniggering - it lowered the box to his table and retreated. 

The box was almost an arm’s length on either side and deeper than a handspan. Would he have room for this in his berth? He removed the top to reveal the black dress she’d worn to dinner: a dense pile of black wisps, webs and panels, sporting a lightsaber burn.

What the hell was he supposed to do with this? With the burn, he couldn’t even sell it. He picked it up to better survey the damage and-

Rey, defiant, surrounded by enemies that weren’t clearly visible. In the background, volcanoes rose from the black, blasted landscape.

Rey standing unsteadily on shattered obsidian ground, the sclera of one eye bruised crimson, lips split, teeth bared and bloody. 

Rey, still bloody, holding out one hand, her eyes pleading while behind her, fountains of fire spouted from oppressive dark peaks. 

A small, crudely carved gravestone, standing alone in a landscape of black volcanic rock.

-he was back in the diner. Shit. What just happened? He dropped the dress back into the box as if it was sun-hot. He’d touched it and seen images. Of Rey. In trouble. Dead? Memories emerged from his training of how some Force sensitives could use Psychometry, the ability to view someone’s past or future from objects they had touched. That must have been it. He’d never manifested this ability before, but this was the way of the Force, a power hidden within us, dormant until awakened. 

So had those events happened already, or were they yet to pass? The image of Rey beaten and bloodied turned his stomach into a roiling, queasy pit and gripped his heart until it hurt. The gravestone. He grasped the edges of the table, steadying himself, head down, breathing hard. 

He knew what he had to do. Finn straightened up, tucked the box under his arm and headed quickly to the exit, and the loading bay beyond. 

  
  
  


\-----

Ziost looked like all the madness in the galaxy gathered up and rolled into a world.

Rey stood before the open doors of the shuttle’s empty loading bay and watched the planet pass below her. The impact of seeing it for real, filling her view from horizon to horizon, separated from it only by vacuum and the magnetic shield that prevented the bay’s air from escaping into space, was overwhelming.

Millennia ago, the Sith Emperor had consumed Ziost, transforming it from a fertile, forested world to a frozen wasteland, but the forces of nature were nothing if not persistent and had retaken swathes of the planet, resulting in a patchwork of forests, deserts, tundras and blue seas. A bizarre anomaly: a multi-terrain world.

And because it had been home to the Sith, there were volcanos, bands of them criss-crossing continents, snaking across land and sea like angry black wounds, scabbed over, broken and bleeding. What was it with Sith and volcanoes, she wondered? Was it the colors? Black and red was the must-have look for Darksiders this aeon. The ash they belched out that darkened the sky? Sith had a natural aversion to tanning. Maybe the raw, uncontrolled display of destructive power. She’d seen vistas of Fortress Vader on Mustafar. Wouldn’t have been quite the same perched on a golden beach. 

Rey set the almost empty bottle of merenzane down against a wall and tiptoed towards the edge of the bay until her bare toes hung over the lip of the floor, then reached out until her fingertips tingled against the shield. 

She spun a quarter turn to walk the edge, one foot in front of the other like a tightrope, arms out (but not too far, don’t want to hit vacuum) for balance. Fifteen steps and she reached a wall. A pirouette of 180 degrees with all the grace that would be expected after most of a bottle of the hard stuff and a few of those chav-rum things (never did get to the coffee), twisting and fighting to regain balance before starting her tightrope walk to the opposite side, the blackness of space and Ziost to her right; it had passed into shadow now, oppressive and dark. Careful, girl.

The field hummed ominously, less than an arms length away. What would happen if she screwed up and fell, tumbling through it? Nothing fatal - she should be able to use the Force to move back inside - but something between extremely unpleasant and permanently damaging. Exposure to vacuum had almost killed Leia and she had had decades more experience in a wider variety of Force skills. 

Perhaps she should just take a swan dive right off the edge. See how bad it is. That would be wonderfully stupid. Destructive. Painful. 

The halfway point was marked by a shallow depression in the floor, a few hands width. To make things more interesting, Rey stopped before it, bent her knees and made a leap, left foot stretching to the other side. Misjudged, landing badly, toes half on the deck, heel slipping, arms pinwheeling, slapping hard vacuum, its icy sharp pain shooting down her forearms. Ziost loomed huge, swallowing her whole as she fell into it. 

A hand grasped her left wrist, pulling her back in.

“Looks like you need a partner for this dance,” Leia said.

Rey was suspended in space and time for an instant, a sliver of a moment caught between fear and astonishment, wide grey eyes meeting dark ones that sparkled with a hint of a smile. For a second, Rey wondered whether this was truth or just some cruel alcohol induced dream. But there was no mistaking it; Leia always seemed more real, more solid than the other ghosts. 

“I’m fine,” Rey said, on reflex.

“Really?” Leia looked around and took in the planet below, “What are you doing here?”

Rey’s mouth opened and tried to work but no words came. Was Leia asking why she was in the loading bay, or orbiting Ziost? She didn’t particularly want to answer either of those. 

“I’m not sure,” she felt like a deer caught in headlights, wide eyed, unable to tear her gaze from the woman that had meant so much. Teacher, mentor, leader. Friend. Mother-figure.

Leia kept hold of Rey’s hand and moved to stand beside her, where they could both face the world below, “Well in that case, stand with me a moment and see if anything comes to mind. It’s quite a view.”

Rey squeezed cool fingers tighter, and never wanted to let go. “No,” she breathed. 

“No?” Leia raised an eyebrow.

“Not just a moment, please.”

A sad, gentle smile. “We don’t get to choose how we say goodbye.”

They stood, fingers entwined and watched a mad world turn below them. 

There were so many things she should ask Leia while she was here. About the Dark Side, about her son. About the Jedi path and why it had to wind and twist its way through the darkest places and how to perform that dance and keep your balance without a guiding hand. How not to step off that edge, even for a moment, but keep the Light beneath your feet. How to fight the fear of what would happen if you crossed the line you’d touched too many times and kept returning to. And what to do if one day you tumbled into that void, when- 

“I miss you,” the words escaped her in a rush, every second precious when it may be the last, “I miss you most of all. Why did you have to go?” 

“It was my time,” the Princess assured her. 

“It wasn’t!” the words and tears poured out in one desperate plea, “It wasn’t fair! We loved you so much. You were the best of us, you were everything to us. To me.”

“Please stay,” she begged, knowing it was impossible, knowing she wasn’t making sense, but past caring, “If you stay, it’ll be alright. I’ll be everything you ever wanted me to be,” her voice broken by a need that tore through her heart, “You’ll be so proud of me.” 

The girl crumpled to the cold steel floor. She had slain gods and monsters, crushed demons and torn down empires but could never conquer the five year old who had watched her world turn its back and leave her drowning in pain and fear, alone. 

“I already am,” Leia knelt to wrap the broken girl in her arms. 

“Don’t leave,” a whispered croak. 

“You fought alone, so hard for so long, that you forgot there was any other way,” Leia took the girl’s chin in her hand, raising her head to look into a tear streaked face, “Let your heart lead you now. Let the Force join you.”

“I don’t know how,” Rey pleaded, “I’ve spent my life fighting.”

“You’ll know, when the time comes. You already know what you need.”

Leia smiled, and was gone.

“No,” Rey whispered, the feel of a touch of a hand still on her face. She reached out, fingers passing through the space Leia’s ghost had occupied just a second ago, just a moment ago, but already gone, lost in time. She had been right there in front of her, as kind as she remembered, as wonderful as ever, but Leia had slipped through her fingers like a wisp and now it was as if she had never even been there. Leia had left and she was alone. Again.

“No!” she screamed, flooded by despair, floundering in it as if caught in an angry ocean. It drowned her, the suffocating waters closing over her head, engulfing her in a wretchedness that reduced her to nothing. Why was it her fate to suffer this again and again, to be abandoned, to be tortured until destiny had drunk her dry? 

She leapt up and with an incoherent roar threw herself into the void, the sizzle of the field as she passed through giving way to a weightless silence, complete and dead save the thump of her heart and the whispering rush of the breath from her lungs. 

Before her, Ziost filled the universe, the darkness of its shadow pricked by points of angry red.

She formed a barrier around herself using the Force, but too close to the skin, too imprecise; she was a weapon of war, a destroyer and lacked Leia’s finesse. The vacuum burned her. She welcomed it: she needed to feel something, anything but that which pierced her soul, even if it killed her. 

Rey roared silently into the void, a cry of soundless anguish, the buzz in her throat and trembling through her tendons the only sign of her suffering other than the agony that impaled her heart like a burning spear, leaving her body pinned, suspended in space. 

She watched tears drift into the dark, sparkling like diamonds, as if she were disintegrating, breaking apart with agonising slowness into tiny icy pieces until there was nothing left of her. 

She was tired, so tired. In a few more seconds, she would be gone, her light extinguished, reduced to another ghost. Was this a good end? Was this what she wanted?

No.

From the anguish that consumed her flared a fire, a defiance that burned within to drive back despair and fill her with a white-hot calm.

She was forgotten, forsaken by those she loved, but that was of little consequence. Her strength was not reliant on their love or approval. She was a hero, and heroes worked alone. Luke had defended the Rebellion against certain destruction from a position of total isolation.

The world below loomed huge and angry. It was trying to intimidate her, dominate her, but it would not succeed. Its futile attempts meant nothing to her. She was Rey Skywalker and nothing could break her. The destroyer of the Sith, conqueror of the Palpatine dynasty, the vengeful sword of Light and Justice. She was the defender of all that was right and good in this galaxy, and she would descend from the heavens to the surface of this ravaged, twisted world to smite the followers of the Dark. She was blinding, she was a star, loved and admired by billions. She would turn the balance forever to the Light. She alone could guide civilization into an age of New Glory. 

Dazzling bright, the sun revealed itself from behind Ziost; a sunrise on a new day. Rey raised her arms to shield her eyes and watched them shimmer as sunlight glittered on the particles of ice that covered them. She smiled as she shone like a star, turning her hands this way and that, admiring them. No more tears. Back inside quick, before she succumbed to lack of oxygen. She was alone, but she was powerful, with purpose. There was a job to do. 

\-----

So how many of these modules were devoted to cargo and how many for living quarters? And how many other passengers? Finn wondered, as he hauled the kit bags, plus one large dress box tucked under his arm, up the ramp into the interior of the Bakura Siren. From the diner he’d watched crate after crate being loaded under Adra’s supervision and had started to get a sinking feeling about the cargo-living space divide.

What a difference an hour makes; concerns about comfort weren’t a priority any more, and in any case he would have put up with worse, a lot worse, during his time with the rebellion. He was ready for anything.

From the back of the loading bay he found a corridor that led down the spine of the craft, past cargo pod docking assemblies to emerge into the living quarters, an open space with comfortable seating surrounding a low table, and what seemed to be a dining table at the other end. Finn put the bags down and surveyed the place. Initial impression: not bad at all. Liveable. Certainly more comfortable than the Falcon.

A human male, a decade or so older than him, tall and dark skinned, black hair in elaborately woven dreads, walked up. No, not human: distinctive facial tattoos showed him to be Kiffar. 

“Hi,” said the Kiffar with an easy smile and presented his hand, “Quonar Dan. I’m onboard as far as Fedalle.”

Finn took the hand and shook it. “Finn. Good to meet you. I’m going all the way to Corellia. Any other passengers?” 

“Yeah,” he said and nodded in the direction of a corridor, “Here they are now.”

Two girls walked into the living quarters: human teenagers, dark hair both tied in the same three-bun style, both in this season's pre-worn, faux-scavenger-wear, one of them even had a full size quarterstaff strapped to her back.

Reywalkers. Fangirls.

Finn rolled his eyes and groaned.

The gaze of both girls snapped to Finn and he heard the sound of two sharp intakes of breath. A hurried exchange of excited whispers and they walked over, eyes wide. 

“Are you Finn?” the taller one asked, breathlessly.

“Yeah,” he confirmed. How did they know his name?

Both jaws dropped open.

“THE Finn?”

“Well,” he asked uncertainly, “Which Finn do you mean?”

“Rey’s Finn, of course.”

“The one she goes on and on about,” the shorter, quarterstaff girl continued.

“She does?” Finn asked.

“What do you mean ‘She does’?” the taller girl asked, astonished.

“Like the time she did that big all-access show for Corogue. They cut it out but we found the makeup artist’s behind the scenes vids-” 

“We watch everything about her. Everything,” interjected the other.

“-and she talks about you for ages, like, she won’t stop. She says ‘FN’ is her rock, her moral compass. Without you she’d still be on Jakku, dying slowly in the dust, blah, blah. You never saw that?” 

“No,” he was amazed. Nobody had ever mentioned it. 

“You must have heard about that fancam. The drunk one.”

“Fancam?” Finn had done his best to avoid things like this. 

“Oh, you should see it. We’ll find it for you, it’s just, like, so embarrassing, but so romantic at the same time.”

“Some guy filmed her at a posh resort and she’s had a few too many, and she’s just staring into her drink, wittering on about ‘FN’ this, ‘FN’ that. How he’s the one that got away, he was too good for her…”

Finn looked away, listening to the girl with a mix of sadness and fear. Sadness with the realization that so much had gone unsaid, so much had been hidden, by both of them, and the fear that they had left it too late to reverse that course. A rising dread that he might never see her alive again and earn the chance to put things right, lay all their fears aside and share the truth.

“...the best man she ever knew, etc. etc. It’s so cringey. Really obtrusive. Seen it a hundred times.”

“Everyone was going nuts trying to figure out who it was, but we worked it out,” the Reywalker continued.

“One of our friends is a Poeser.”

Finn looked blank.

“You know, huge Poe Dameron fanboy,” one of them explained. 

“That’s a thing?” Finn asked, eliciting incredulous looks from the girls. 

“And he found this old interview for some obscure pilot’s trade static where the interviewer ended by asking him about his romantic status-”

“As you would,” interrupted quarterstaff girl, “Uhhhh…” she sighed, the mere thought of Poe Dameron (The Best Pilot In The Galaxy) inducing a rush of sexual pleasure that verged on orgasmic.

“-and Poe carries on about ‘Finnster’, what an amazing guy he is, but he might have to fight Rey for him.”

“So we thought ‘FN’ and ‘FiNnster’ might be one and the same.”

“And then there was that photo in the big static by Larma D’Acy where there’s you and Rey and Poe posing by the Falcon, and she’d captioned you ‘Finn’.”

“Finn. Finnster. FN,” declared the other girl, triumphantly.

“So we cross referenced ‘Finn’ into all these other things written by resistance fighters around that time. And you’re everywhere. They all say you were, like, The Man.”

“You’re a legend!” announced quarterstaff girl.

“So is it true?” asked the taller girl breathlessly.

“Is what true?” asked Finn, reeling. He’d had no idea anyone had written about him, but he’d never bothered to read any of those accounts of the final days of the resistance; why would he? 

“You learned Sabacc from Lando Calrissian.”

“The Master,” Finn confirmed with a smile and a nod.

“Dejarik from Chewbacca.”

“Master cheat.”

“Flying from Dameron.”

“Said I was a fast learner, though he might have been talking about something else.”

“Iced Phasma”

“Toasted actually,” he chuckled.

“Kicked Kylo Ren’s ass”

“More or less.”

“Blew up Starkiller with Solo.”

“All my idea. I take full responsibility.”

“Were best buds with Princess Organa.” 

“We were close, you know.”

“And Saint Tico!”, remembered the shorter, “She said you-”

“Yes,” Finn interrupted, “Yes I did.”

“Wow,” the girls gasped as one, “You’re fucking awesome.”

“Yeah, I guess I am,” Finn nodded, “I may not be as awesome as Rey, but I’m still pretty fucking awesome. I keep forgetting that.”

He shot the girls a wry smile topped off with a shrug, “Some would say it’s my biggest flaw.”

“I can’t believe you’re here,” said the taller one, “I can’t wait to hear all the stories.”

“Glad to, but it’ll have to wait. We’re going to Ziost, fast," he announced.

“Ziost? Why?”

“Rey’s in trouble, and I’ve got to go help her.”

“No way! Fuck!” the Reywalkers were going out of their minds. The shorter girl pulled the quarterstaff off her back and looked like she was ready to take on some Knights there and then.

“What kind of trouble?” she asked.

“Darksiders are waiting for her there. I just had a vision from the Force, and it looks like it’s going to go bad. Real bad.”

“So you're going to kick their ass?”

“Truthfully, I don’t know,” Finn shook his head, remembering Toola and Qaradoun, the pain of the vibro-weapon wound, his strength slipping away in the night and the rain, “Last time around they kicked mine. I almost died.”

“But heroes don’t just fight when they know they can win,” he held their awe-struck, slack-jawed gaze with a steely intensity, a conviction born of walking this path before, knowing victory is uncertain and death is waiting, but emerging triumphant. “They fight when it's right, even if the odds are against them.”

“And you’re a hero,” breathed the only Reywalker that could find her voice. 

“Yes,” Finn declared, “I am a hero.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew! Thanks for getting the end! (Of this chapter) Always good to see people in the end notes. I’m going to make another coffee and watch my hamster dig tunnels...
> 
> Right. Well who would have thought that “Rey mopes around shuttle, talks to ghosts, turns to the dark side while Finn decides to turn back to Ziost” would turn out to be around 16000 words! Not me, but you have much to learn, young Padawan.
> 
> Now I just have to bring this thing in for landing. How hard can that be? Don’t answer that, I don’t want to know. Here I go!


	7. Chapter 7

How close would this one get?

Rey leaned forward a little to watch another spray of red explode from the largest of the glowing craters, far below the shuttle. Tendrils of lava stretched and broke into globes as it reached up, as if projected by the Dark Side itself, grasping for the hated Skywalker until gravity overcame it and the molten rock retreated to fall to the blackened landscape as a hard, burning rain. 

That one hadn’t quite made it, but maybe if she lowered the Beltane a little more? She could watch this all day.

Stood on the edge of the loading bay, the landscape beneath her was mesmerizing. Pitch black rock, bent and twisted into smoothly flowing shapes of rivers of lava past, studded with pools of bright red, laced with scarlet veins. To her right, white clouds of ash billowed, angry and dense, obscuring her objective: the temple, and the artifact within. 

And somewhere within it, the Darksiders. She could feel them waiting and assumed they could feel her watching. How many they were it was hard to say, because of their proximity to the Temple: a Dark presence, a stain on the Force so intense it could be felt from orbit. Whatever had happened there, whatever evil it contained, had cast a shadow that had all but extinguished light and life from this world.

Rey took a breath and stilled her mind. Showtime.

“To point one,” she commanded the craft, and it slid away from the craters, to a position over the ash cloud.

“Lower field.”

The wind rushed into the bay and whipped around her, flooding the space with a sulphuric odor and a biting chill. It ruffled the new tunic and pants that she’d had the craft fabricate that morning. They were a little more formal than her standard workwear, a sandy gold edged in white that seemed more appropriate to a warrior of the light than the usual dark grey. 

She crossed her arms over her body and stepped off the edge, to plummet downwards, the fall momentarily overwhelming her senses before she could stabilize and connect with the Force again, using it to ensure she stayed upright and not tumble. She closed her eyes and couldn’t suppress a smile. The Force Descent was one of the first core skills she had mastered. Idiosyncratic to every Jedi, most used air currents to assist them, like birds, gliding and soaring, but there was no subtlety in her approach, just power and nerve.

The shuttle was left far behind now. It would ascend to orbit and wait, shielded and concealed; no sense in exposing it to whatever dangers lurked below. The ash cloud looked like solid rock as it rushed towards her. Would she feel the impact? She’d not considered that, but had considered the mess the clinging dust would make, and had planned ahead; she wasn’t going to show up to the party smothered in grey gunge. Reputations. She constructed a Force Barrier around herself, as she had done against the vacuum earlier, the world silent for a few moments before she emerged into clear air and her attention switched to slowing and stopping her fall, to touch down gracefully onto the flat black plain. 

From here, the ash clouds were low and oppressive, casting shadows of perfect dark on the dim landscape, some ghostly wisps broken free to skim the ground. The glow of lava pools and rivers illuminated distant clouds, bathing the scene in a soft red light. Rey stood upon a surface of obsidian perfection, a vast expanse of flat black volcanic glass that reflected the clouds above and clicked against her boots as she started to walk in the direction of the temple. She couldn’t see it yet, but could sense where it lay, waiting. 

A stray shaft of sunlight pierced the billowing clouds to fall upon the plain in front of her, illuminating what lay within, and her steps faltered and slowed. Rubble, pieces of buildings, machinery. And people. Crowds of them, flocks of them suspended in the hard, black ocean beneath her feet, ghostly and still, some looking to the sky in terror, some clinging to loved ones, their final moments preserved in perfection for all time. An entire civilization extinguished and frozen in a single monstrous, desperate act by a failing empire of evil, a world that had laughed and loved and lived reduced to a beautiful, obscene graveyard by the Dark Side.

And the Darksiders worshipped this desolation. She had descended to this cursed planet to take their beloved artifact from them and see it used for good, but that no longer seemed sufficient. They deserved to have judgement brought down upon their evil fucking heads, and it was her destiny to bring justice and light to this place. It fell to her, nobody else. They were near, she could smell them and now they were fucked, completely fucked; she was going to enjoy this. 

Rey picked up the pace and strode onward. 

\-----

“Nice move,” Finn commented, studying the board. Now her Strider was forking his Monnok and ‘slug from the outer ring.

“I read Chewbacca was Dejarik champion on Kashyyk, way back, before the Clone Wars,” remarked Evrina, the staff-wielding Reywalker and Finn’s opponent.

“News to me,” Finn said dubiously.

“Is it true,” Quonar asked, the tall Kiffar lounging beside them with a beer, ”Poe light speed skipped out of the Sinta Glacier, through the Typhonic Nebula and Ivexia to get intelligence back to the Rebellion?”

“Cardovyte as well. They were tricky to shake,” replied Finn.

“What a guy,” Quonar shook his head, that faraway look in his eye again. He’d been quizzing Finn about Poe ever since his connection to The Best Pilot in the Galaxy had become known. 

“Be still, my heart,” sighed Evrina.

“I’ll drink to that,” the Kiffar sipped from his pint and exchanged a smile with the girl. They’d been bonding ever since their shared crush on The Best Pilot in the Galaxy had become evident. 

“So you were there?” asked Kiro, the taller Reywalker, chin resting in her hand, watching Finn intently; her eyes had hardly left him since he came onboard. Poe and Rey seemed to take this kind of adulation in their stride, but he found the attention alternating between disconcerting and weirdly flattering, and wasn’t yet sure where the needle would come to rest on it. 

A reply died on his lips as Adra emerged from the corridor that led to the bridge, looking shaken and unsettled, her eyes finding him quickly. 

“Finn. We’re there, but you better see this,” she said before disappearing back into the passageway.

Finn met Evrina’s gaze with a shrug, “Sounds serious.”

“Sounds like Hero stuff,” Evrina smiled as Finn rose from the board to follow the captain into the narrow corridor that wound through the ship to deliver him onto the bridge. 

The blast shields were lowered, blocking the view outside the craft. The navigator, a human male reclined in his chair sucking the air in deep breaths while the second-in-command, an older Twi’lek woman, put a comforting hand on his shoulder. 

Adra tapped a button and winced as a holo of Ziost popped up, in all its maddening, multi-terrained glory. “If I hadn’t hit the blast shields,” she announced, gesturing at the globe, “This would have fried poor Eron’s brain. What the hell is it?”

“An ancient Sith homeworld,” Finn regarded it coolly, accustomed to the sight of the planet and all its contradictions now. “Some bad shit happened here, a few thousand years back, and this is the result.”

“And you’re going down there?”

“Yeah. She’s there, and I need to find her, fast.”

“Rather you than me. So where then?”

Where indeed? Rey could be anywhere on the planet’s surface. He stilled himself and made the connection, relaxed into the energy around him, the same energy that surrounded her, joining them. The song she sang in the Force made ripples that spread into the infinite to touch them both, carrying a signature in a note he knew so well. He turned the holo with a gesture and found a chain of volcanoes in the northern hemisphere, then zoomed in to one in particular. 

“There,” he pointed.

  
  


\-----

  
  


Rey saw the path first, its whiteness caught momentarily by the sun, luminous against a landscape composed entirely of black stone and glass. And soon after that, the heads, carved from volcanic rock, each of them taller than her. Two parallel rows of ten flanked the slim white trail. The temple entrance came to her attention last, a plain black cube at the end of the path, just four body lengths on each side with a large doorway-shaped opening that gave access to the underground complex.

Her steps carried her onto the path, which crunched a little underfoot as she walked. She didn’t need to kneel and examine it to know; it was constructed from bone, millions of fragments spread here by disciples long gone and cemented over the centuries by drifting ash and occasional rainfall.

The heads, she realized, were suspended a short distance above the ground, presumably by the same kind of Sith sorcery that defied gravity on Exegol and other temples she had seen. Another of their technologies that could have served the galaxy but instead was lost to endless conflict, a casualty of the division of light and dark. 

For a moment she felt vulnerable under the gaze of the massive stone faces as they watched her pass and wondered if they could be a trap: lure the unwary and unworthy onto the extremely obvious path, a path of Light no less, and bring some lethal force to bear on them. But the heads did not stir. She had the impression they approved.

The silent visages were carvings of Sith saints. Beings that had an understanding of power, strength and suffering that transcended that of the merely evil. How to use them to create a virtuous circle of ever greater power and pain. How to mine suffering. How to find the dirtiest, foulest parts of the worst beings in the galaxy, the parts that even they would deny to themselves and hide away in shame rather than give voice to or act upon, and having found these, nurture them, employ them in the creation of something bordering on beauty. She admired their dedication to creating works of wonder, of exquisite, alluring purity, from the darkest depths of the soul, and felt the doubt and fear that came from wondering whether she admired it too much. 

  
  


\-----

  
  


“Seriously?!” yelled Adra over the roar of the wind, clinging to a rack fixed to one wall of the loading bay. 

Good question, thought Finn, as he walked towards the open bay doors and peered over the edge, down to the hellish scene far below of dark swirling rock, red glowing lava and white clouds of ash. He clapped his hands and rubbed them together in anticipation. Not ideal, but there was no other way to catch up with Rey fast; Adra wasn’t going to take them down into the clouds, and he had a feeling time was of the essence.

“Yeah, seriously,” he replied, “I’ve done this before. All part of my training,” sounding more confident than he felt. It was true he’d made a couple of half-decent Force Descents, three or so years back, but he’d only just been getting started when he’d quit the academy. Was it the kind of skill that once learnt, stayed with you for life, or would it take time to come back? If it took any more than ten seconds, he was history.

“I’ll wait one day,” Adra confirmed, “After that I’ll call Dameron.”

Finn turned back to her, “Thanks. And watch yourself. If anything looks off or threatening, get out fast.”

The captain held tight to the wall and stared at the angry world below. “You’re crazy, you know that?” and then to him, “She better be worth it.”

“I think so,” he shot her an assured smile, “Which makes me even crazier than you know.”

He turned back to the world before him, one step away but so very far below. Don’t overthink this. You can do it. You are one with the Force. Strong with it. This is your destiny. Get back into that Hero groove.

Two deep breaths, a stilling of the mind, and a jump into the void.

A rush, overwhelming. The noise, the blow of the wind grazing his face, pressure on his limbs and chest, the acceleration, the dizzying, sickening fall ripping his breath and thoughts away. 

He was a fool. It had been too long, too little practice in connecting and using Force skills, let alone in situations like this. He’d forgotten how to do it. What a ridiculous way for his story to end. If they both came back as Force Ghosts, she’d never let him forget it. She would haunt him for all eternity, mocking the time he’d flung himself out of a ship in a ridiculous attempt to save her life and blown it in spectacular fashion. 

Thoughts of eternal ridicule broke through the sensory overload and took him out of the rush, calmed him. He could do this if he remembered what he had been taught. Take your mind back to the training, Finn.

He steadied his flight first. Felt the air and the Force within it, between him and the ground. Felt the energy within that space. More than enough to slow his fall and direct him to where he needed to go. Connect with it. Use it. An updraft, sensed to his left; he moved across and rode it, slowing his fall, letting it slide him over to where the ash clouds looked thinner. The billowing grey mass rushed up to meet him and he instinctively used a Force Push to separate it and see where he was headed, to ensure he wasn’t about to land in a crater full of lava. Looked good; just a flat black plain below.

The landing was a touch heavy, but controlled enough to avoid serious injury: if he’d been told a couple of minutes ago that the price to be paid for such reckless insanity was a couple of bruises, he’d have accepted it gratefully. First challenge over, now to find her. Finn turned, scanning the vista of rock and glass, shrouded in a shadowy gloom, illuminated by the soft red glow of lava on the clouds and scattered pools of light created by shafts of sunlight. No sign of her, but he could sense the direction in which she lay and set off, led by the Force. 

As he walked, he became aware that the glass under his feet held secrets, hidden deep, revealed by the sun when it pierced the clouds and dove into the obsidian sea to show him what this world had once been. The remains of its civilization. The dead. 

Finn realized that he had stopped, and inhaled sharply as the shifting light exposed what lay barely a body’s length below him. A girl, reaching up, up to the sky, to where he now stood, her fingers reaching for the soles of his boots, eyes and mouth wide, beautiful in death, a life reduced to a frozen relic of a world disappeared. Her name had been Kira, he realized, without understanding how. She had been waiting for a boy, on a sunny day, when it had happened, when she and everyone around her had been engulfed by a terror and chaos that stretched moments into an eternity before ending in an abrupt and final silence. Finn broke free of the girl’s gaze, pulled his cape around him and walked on, and did his best not to think of what had happened here when life had stopped, millennia ago. 

  
  


\-----

  
  


“Betrayer. We meet again.” 

The cyborg’s voice ground its way out of its massive metallic frame, which appeared to Rey to be even larger than last time they’d met. Was that an upgrade or downgrade? Hard to tell. She’d find out the hard way and wouldn’t make the mistake of going easy on him, it, this time.

Its bulk blocked the entrance to the temple, a plain opening cut into the black stone cube that stood at the end of the path of bone under her feet.

“This time I’ll kill you right,” she said, “I’m going to slice you up so fine I’ll be able to cook you and eat you and take a huge metal shit into that volcano,” she nodded at one of the fire-spitting peaks, “That should do it.”

The cyborg winced at the thought of such an unhonorable and thorough death. “You’re no Jedi,” it growled. 

“The first and last thing we’ll ever agree on,” she ignited her saber and stepped forwards. 

The cyborg advanced a step, and from the entrance behind him emerged two columns of Darksiders; Knights and their followers and acolytes, practitioners of the ways of the Sith. A variety of races and species and weapons, but all wearing the same scowls or looks of cool contempt, clothed in the standard Darksider black, red or tasteful combination thereof. United in the hate she could feel radiating from them like the heat from the distant volcanoes. It brought a warm glow to her heart to know that she was held in such low regard by such total scumbags, though she simultaneously shivered a little in anticipation; she’d known there were a few here, but not this many, not so organized. There must have been fourteen, fifteen. Too many. 

They formed two rows, either side of the cyborg. “This is where it ends, Betrayer,” it rumbled, “How long did you think we would let you pick us off one by one?”

“Well, well. The gang’s all here,” she couldn’t help her lip curling in a defiant sneer, “You’re going to need every single fucking one of them.”

“Traitor to your bloodline,” shouted a Knight as he stepped forwards, out of the rank, “This is where you fall.” He ignited a sputtering red saber as he advanced. Red had always been big, naturally, but sputtering had been a popular trend ever since the fall of the First Order. Rey briefly wondered what Ben would make of that. The Darksiders had never believed that he had turned at the last moment...

Focus, girl! The Knight was a massive, male human, at least a head taller than her, armor pads placed more for cosmetics than protection, perched upon an unnaturally well muscled physique that was tightly wrapped in something black and shiny. A panel populated by blank red and grey buttons was strapped between his bulging pectorals. His shaven head was gruesomely scarred, with a sickly grey pallor, but she doubted that to be the result of actual injury; everything about him looked derivative of Sith hall of famers. 

Rey watched him bear down upon her, his filed teeth bared in a snarl and was vaguely aware that to any sane, normal person, he would be terrifying, but the thought of these guys having a big game of rock-paper-scissors for the privilege of taking down Rey Skywalker and thereby achieving everlasting glory was actually quite amusing. Too bad for this dope that he’d won. 

“When this is done and you are beaten, oh what games we shall play,” he growled, “I’ve dreamed of them a thousand times. You will beg for death.”

Rey frowned. “Is that from your Cinder profile? I think I swiped right on you last week.”

She could see the other Knights moving to flank her. This guy wasn’t the threat, just the biggest, hungriest distraction they had. Still, he was going to do his best to slice her limbs off and transform her life into a living hell. She wondered how many other women, or men, he’d played his games with. 

Lightsaber in his right hand, he reached around to a back holster with his left to draw a vibro axe and leap at her with a roar, both weapons bearing down on the space she occupied. It would have been an impressive way of cleaving her into bloody chunks, if she’d not spent years hunting beings just like him, so sure of their strength and power, so sure that she was all reputation, a grand façade created to hide a weakling girl. A Force-assisted step to snap her in a fraction of a second to a place outside of the line of attack. A whip of a yellow arc and the hand holding the sputtering saber was falling to the bone-white path. Surprise in his eyes and a second yellow flash left the other hand and the axe clattering across the ground. Fury and shock twisted his face; the pain wouldn’t hit for seconds yet. Eyes wide in disbelief followed the skittering axe and went dumbly to where his hands should have been but she wanted him to look at her before she did it. Their gaze met, and she swept the saber up between his legs, stopping halfway through his torso. His eyes bugged out of his head, mouth a gaping ‘o’ of horror as he crumpled to his knees, disconnected from legs that might support him, blood and shit and fluids flooding from the split body.

Good. It was her mission to rid the galaxy of such worthless creatures and return it to the light. Let the cleansing begin. 

Now the fight was on. Two rushed at her from the left, a tall human male with close cropped silver hair, and a bith, Sith prayers etched into its bulging yellow skull. She felt an intangible assault from her right, Force fear, from something that might once have been human and female. It wouldn’t work on her. She skipped backwards down the path, luring the two on, to avoid being surrounded. They had numbers. She needed to move, to take them on in ones and twos, or she was dead.

The human reached her first, just, and launched a quick thrust with his red saber. Not quick enough though; she blasted him back against a head, hard, and took the fight to the bith, who was skilled, but it took only a couple of seconds to get to her go-to feint and deliver a fatal slash across the midsection. 

The rest were trying to surround her. The correct tactic. All they needed to do was get some behind her and she was done. If she continued to retreat, she would end up on the glass plain, but the heads were useful cover. So, forward, into the vanguard, reduce the numbers.

She loved this. She shouldn’t, but these moments of blood and clarity when she could forget all the shit, all the regrets and pain and be free from expectations, without judgement, holding life and death in her hands alone, were when she felt most alive. These were the moments she was closest to the Force, the most in touch with a heritage best denied, deep in a connection without limits. She loved it far too much, she knew.

So she fought. She spun, she flipped and skipped, a blur, a savage dance. She used the heads to block and divide them, quicker than their fastest, crueler than their worst. They fought atop the temple entrance, leapt from head to head, skated on the expanse of black glass and atop the bones of the dead, and the Darksiders fell one by one. 

But they were many. A Force blast caught her by surprise, sending her flying from the top of a stone head to a heavy landing on a painfully twisted knee. A grazing blow from a vibro scythe rattled the teeth in her head hard enough to taste blood and permanently blur the vision in one eye. A fast, precise kick from a long limbed togrutan, drove the wind from her and slammed her into a head, bright points of light swirling before her eyes as she watched her blood spatter on the bones at her feet. 

Still she did not fall, and as the battle continued, she relished seeing the expressions change on their hateful fucking faces, as they knew they were done, that their dreams of status and Sith superstardom were going to come to nothing, just another one cut down by the detestable Rey Skywalker, the Betrayer. She loved to watch the dwindling remainders grow increasingly uncertain, and start to look for escape, but they were so far from help. Poor them.

Until at last it was just her and the cyborg, standing before the temple entrance. That seemed fitting. One arm hung limp by its side, the other clutched the huge dual bladed vibroscythe-saber.

“Here we are again,” she tried not to limp as she walked towards it. Not looking her best, she knew; that eye was fucked and the left side of her head felt weird. Get this done and get back to the med bay. 

The ‘borg threw down its weapon, without a word.

“Huh,” she was left bemused and a little confused by this act of apparent surrender. “I’m not really going to eat you. I’m on a low titanium diet. We’ll do this the old fashioned way.” She cast away the saber, which spun a golden disc as it looped away in a grand arc to the rear of the stone cube.

Their eyes met.

“Strike me down,” it rumbled, “You lose either way, Palatine.” 

The spinning saber returned from the opposite side of the cube to slice the Knight in half, the two pieces falling and striking crystal splinters from the brittle ground. Rey caught the hilt and stood over the creature’s torso, focusing to split its armor into curling strips and delve within, as she had done before, but this time not searching for some lifeless artifact. She wasn’t going to make the same mistake again; this time she would end it.

“There you are,” she whispered, exposing the small, wriggling humanoid in the heart of the machinery, the master of the monster that was its home and identity. She used the Force to peel back the metal that enclosed it, and it hissed, recoiling from the light, defenseless now.

The compassion that bloomed within her was unexpected, but it was hard to reconcile this weak, squirming creature with the monster that moments ago had tried to kill her, and that she knew had shown others no mercy. It was one thing to kill a Sith acolyte, a vessel for evil, in combat, and something else to end this life in cold blood.

A chill gust ruffled her hair and wrapped her in an embrace that brought a shiver to bones that had fought too hard for too long. Adrenaline ebbed away, leaving her heavy, feet rooted to the ground, fatigued and aware of the dirt and blood that covered her, a burnt hand, a dozen other hurts. Rey looked back at the path behind her and the bodies strewn across it. Beyond that the black mirror of the obsidian sea of the dead and the peaks that dominated the land, spitting fire from the heart of this burning planet. The shuttle waiting in orbit and the expectant Council. All the steps that had brought her to here and now, where it was too late to turn back, too late to choose another, less bloody, destiny. 

She turned back to the creature, levelled the saber at it and quickly ran the blade through its scrawny, naked body. It stiffened, gasped and went still. A new injury, a new ache from deep within her, flared up and she pushed it away, almost, but not quite, burying it as just another act of war. Another wound that wouldn’t show, but left a scar all the same. 

From deep in the hidden heart of the temple, the artifact called. She had not yet fulfilled the mission. Rey extinguished the saber and entered.

\-----

Finn strode the surface of the great glass expanse and felt the ghosts beneath his feet, in the burnt air around him and the sky above, surrounding him, their pleas whispered wordlessly. The shock and fear they felt in their final moments permeated this place, held here embedded in the Force, the calls becoming louder with every step. 

They didn’t deserve to die, they protested. They were innocent. Who had done this to them, they asked. Millennia-old regrets, unfulfilled wishes, unrequited loves and broken promises flowed through him, filling him with ancient pains and sorrows, resurrected to burn his soul. He sought a way to block them out without disconnecting entirely from the Force; he had to, because how could he help them, how could he fix this? It was impossible, an ages old crime, the perpetrator long gone. The voices that had no sound reached a crescendo and became overpowering, bringing him to a stuttering stop as they crowded out his own thoughts, leaving him unable to feel anything but the dead. 

Finn screwed his eyes shut. Trust the Force. Let it guide him. Let the Force and the lifeforce of those that died here, carried within it, flow through him. Don’t fight it. He surrendered to the flow, let himself be immersed, swam in it, drank it in and understood; by allowing them this contact, by hearing them, he was releasing them. They needed to be heard, after so long trapped in a perfect and total silence. He would bear this for them.

On he walked, across the dark plain and felt the release of the thousands that had died here as they passed through him. Their anguish and regret still burned, but with every step the pain this fire brought was diminished, replaced by a strength, building within him.

Finn shuddered a little as he stepped onto the white path and understood its story, kneeling to lift a piece and turn the fragment of bone in his fingers. A little way along, he encountered the first of the bodies, maybe Knight, maybe Sith, or some acolyte - he was never up on Darksider fashions - but definitely killed by a lightsaber. Rey had been here. Further on, blood, a vivid scarlet spattered on the ivory ground, still fresh. She had been here only minutes before. Could the blood be hers? He scanned the scene and saw other bodies but recognized none of them, thank the Force. 

At the end of the path of bone, a stark black cube and an entrance cut into it. He could see steps leading down into an interior hidden by shadows of perfect pitch, but Finn didn’t need eyes to know what lay deep within. The sins of the Dark Side emanated from the temple like a stench that assaulted his every nerve end. 

Rey never should have come here. It was a place that should remain forever locked away, forgotten, untouched by any being that hadn’t surrendered every spark of light, every good thing in themselves to the appetites of the Dark Side, but she was inside somewhere, misled and confused by forces he didn’t yet understand, facing dangers she would not be able to overcome alone. 

And only he could save her. Hero time. Finn pushed his cape over his shoulder, ignited his saber and descended into darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for making it to the end of another chapter! You rule :)
> 
> Another unscheduled break, but it felt right. I'm flagging a bit at the end, but won't stop, can't stop now! Just that finale to go now...


End file.
